I am going to make a giant post about character damage and attempt to explain why damage is so high in a few particular cases. Some of these values are not fully optimum but they are around the "average" stuff that you see from practical stuff. No weird God's Beard 800K meterless Poison tip Magneto combos in here.
Zero - Does a million damage off 2 assists.... from a THROW. Can generally kill solo as well from a stray hit. Can do about 900K damage meterless from 2 assists. Probably the most efficient killer in the game next to maybe Hulk.
Why? Damage scaling on his normals and specials is obviously way too high. It's 20% for normals and a whopping 30% for specials which only 2/3 characters in the game have that much (Hulk being one of them). Lightning Loops allow him to chain a bunch of lightning attacks together further inflating his damage to new heights. Remove Loops by taking out soft knockdown property on Lightning and lowering the scaling of his normals to 10% (the average value for most characters like Magneto, still higher than Vergil's) and his specials to 20% (still in the high range but without Loops it's way more controlled).
Vergil - If he has meter he has one of the highest damage combos in the game. If he doesn't have meter his damage potential is less but he can usually easily build the meter in a combo with assists.
With 1 bar starting he can do 1.3 million damage which is absurd. If Vergil expends no bars in his combo, his damage is actually very fair and bordering on mediocre especially from air throws. Vergil also has the property of further inflating other characters damage via DHCs in his Spiral Swords, adding over 400K damage in some cases after full combos.
Why? Spiral Swords allows him to loop many specials together and build just enough meter to loop another Spiral Swords in most cases. The more meter he has the more loops he can perform. While Vergil's normal damage scaling is low at 5%, his special scaling is a bit high at 20% allowing his moves like Lunar Phase to do high damage even at max scaling. The problem with him is simple... either you lower his special scaling from 20 to 10 or you make Spiral Swords at 2 bar hyper which makes his damage potential extremely fair.
Magneto - Can perform a 900K combo off of clean hit with a couple of assists rather easily. Has over 700K meterless damage potential with assists. Damage is high but not as high as someone like Zero. Does not usually kill off a throw but does decent damage and most importantly builds a lot of meter especially with assists.
Why? His scaling values are generally all fine, each at 10% which is standard. The problem is the HSD on his loops, he is able to link to other a lot of specials before reaching max HSD. His problem is more a HSD thing than a scaling thing.
Dr Doom - Can do a whopping 1 million damage for 1 bar from 1 assist. Even his solo damage is really high, he can get easy 900K damage. Off of throw he can get 600K meterless damage and with assists and meter... he can get 900K damage. With assists he can easily build 2 bars.
Why? I think the problem is 2 folds. His normal move scaling is high at 20% and since Doom's combos are almost all normals that's why the damage adds up. But it's really the excessive relaunches that allow him to get that high, he is allowed way too many brain dead easy relaunches from the ground which inflates his damage. Hitting him with an either scaling change or a HSD change would fix him easily.
Spencer - Can get easy 1 million+ damage with 2 assists especially near the corner. Damage is a bit lower when solo but still decent. Damage with assists off of a throw is still within TOD range, 2 bars 2 assists nets him 1 million damage.
Why? Probably the easiest character to fix in the game in terms of damage output... his 80K wire grapple move is unscaled damage which inflates his damage a TON over time. This is obviously an overlooked bug because they fixed Spider Man's unscaled Web Throw but not Spencer's.
Strange - Can get 1 million damage for 1 bar and 1 assist. Also has among the highest meter gain in combos, can build 2 bars easily in a combo.
Why? His scaling is mostly fine, it's the HSD on his Flame of the Faltine and Impact Palm attacks which allows him to loop together a lot of FotF attacks in a row before HSD disallows the loop.
Dormammu -Does EASY mode 850K+ damage off a single assist. 2 assists he can break 900K. However the big damage comes from the spells which allows him to cross 1 million territory easily. The main requirement is either spells already charged or assists that allow you to charge or corner. Stalking Flare into spells also adds a ton of DHC damage but this is in corners (which is not that difficult given he has Dark Matter into Teleport combos). Meter build without spells is mediocre but with spells it's quite good.
Why? Spells add a ton of damage but even without spells... why the hell is this character getting 800K damage off of a baby mode wall bounce combo? Both the base and scaling are a bit on the high side (scaling at 20% like Doom) although the scaling never actually comes into play it's really just the base damage that is on the high side. He crosses 800K SOLO for 1 bar before the max damage scaling even comes into play.
Wolverine - Does easy mode 500K meterless damage but caps out at that range rather easily. Another bar means he gets to cross into 750K solo damage. 2 bars means he gets to cross 1 million with 2 bars and an assist. Does not build a lot of meter and gets mediocre meterless damage off of throws but with meter he can tack on 500K damage easily at the end of a meterless combo which is absurd.
Why? The base damage is a bit high for Wolverine, I mean the easy with which he gets 500K meterless is a bit funny. But what's really startling is how much damage that Fatal Claw hyper does at the end of combos, easily adds 250K damage by itself no matter the damage scaling applied. Not only that but the hyper can be linked into itself resulting in easy 1 million damage combos for Wolverine. Wolverine usually can't build that much meter by himself so really the only problem with him is that Fatal Claw itself does too much damage and his base damage can be lowered just a tad bit.
Chris - With assists Chris has among the highest meterless damage in the game (750K meterless with 2 assists, probably even higher) and with the ability to link his supers he can break 1 million relatively easily off of 1 bar. Even off of throws he gets huge damage with assists.
Why? Chris has low mix ups so obviously his base damage should be high. His scaling is low so obviously that's not the problem. The problem is the Flamethrower which adds a BOAT LOAD of damage even at max damage scaling. Reducing the damage of the Flamethrower would normalize Chris' combos a bit. The Flamethrower is essentially an 80K equivalent.
Shuma Gorath - Easily breaks 1 million in the corner even solo off of just 1 bar. Gets extremely similar damage from throws. 700K+ meterless damage, is able to link hypers although in some cases he doesn't even need to.
Why? Obviously an issue in his scaling. It should be noted that he only gets absurd damage in corners.
Hulk - One of the highest damage characters in the game, getting EASY 1.3 million damage combos from 2 assists off of just one bar. Even off of a throw he gets very similar damage, about a million there as well from assists.
Why? Hulk is a big body so he is not designed to be getting in a lot of hits so when he does get a hit he is supposed to hit hard. His base damage is high because of this. However his scaling on both his normals and specials is the HIGHEST in the game at 30% each. This allows Hulk to get 1 million damage off of baby mode relaunch combos. Add to that one of his hypers the Gamma Crush tacks in a lot of damage at the end of combos as does a properly positioned Gamma Wave.
Viper - Gets 700K+ meterless damage without assists and can build 2 bars in a combo. Utilizing that meter she can break 1 million solo. Can get very good damage off of throws as well.
Why? The problem here is two folds. Definitely the high 20% scaling for both normals and specials is the culprit, even at the end of combos she is tacking on the damage a lot. However even at the start of combos she is getting a good 600K meterless damage before max damage scaling is kicking in. Either it's a problem in HSD or a problem in her base damage. I think scaling nerf is fine for her though if there is a universal damage nerf.
Iron Man - Can do 1 million 1 bar 2 assists. Other than that his damage is ordinary for this game.
Why? 30% scaling on his specials means any time he does a few too many Repulsar Blasts or Smart Bombs in a combo, even at max damage the damage starts to add up. The meterless damage for Iron Man off of regular hits and throws is fair for this game. His normal damage scaling is at a regular 10%.
Thor - Gets big damage with assists (1 million damage for 1 bar) that allow him to get in some Sparks or Strikes. Does similar damage off of command throw as well. Can also link his Mighty Tornados together for bigger damage.
Why? Mighty Spark (at close range) adds a lot of damage at the end of combos. Other than that it just seems like a base damage issue for being a big body especially his hyper when mashed. Definitely needs assists to do big damage though.
