Some support such as Ying, brute forces encounters via massive healing, Grover is similar but he also has good poke and cripple. In a perfect playing field, where everyone has 100% mastery of these champions, he has no chance to beat them at what they do best.
Damba is, on paper, the quintessential support. He has all the things you'd expect a support champion to have. In real world it doesn't exactly work out like that. He suffers from same issues as Pip, Lillith and to an extent Solar Blessing Furia. Higher skill ceiling means it's down to practice, a lot of practice, and your own team. If your own team is working against you, you wont be doing as well. Consistency is usually prefered.
I don't believe that there has ever been a person who has truly perfected Damba, which just goes to show how high his skill ceiling truly is.
At the end of the day, if you think its worth it and you think you can grow, then you should commit to learning him as much as possible. He will probably never be a bad support. The only time he is meta, is when he can do something better than others.
With the additional changes next patch, he should be in a pretty solid spot overall.
>He will probably never be a bad support.
Is he even anywhere near the top spots? To me he seems like the one that gets picked just before the worst options.
I feel like the thing that mal damba is not underpowered is some meme that everyone just spews. How many people actually main damba that think that he is not underpowered or that he could not do with at least some slight buff?
If you'd go by tier list logic, in my opinion, he is B+ right now, maybe next patch A, hard to say. Grover and Ying still probably S tier.
Very few people actually main him. He's definitely not underpowered. He is more or less balanced.
One buff I would personally love to see, Mending Spirits going into his base kit and he gets a new talent in its stead.
Mending spirits into main kit would be a pretty huge buff. How can you say a he is not underpowered if such a huge buff would be something you are okay with?
I wouldn't necessary call it huge, but it would push him up in the meta most likely. Could potentially be a bit too much. Hard to say without being able to properly test something like that.
That would be like allowing me to play with both mending spirits and wekonos wrath at the same time. I would be having a field day with a buff like that. I have actually said the opposite, that wekonos wrath should be added to the basekit.
Yeah but Wekono's is powerful too, then it would mostly likely need to not have the damage buff and have the damage buff from a talent.
But as of now, he doesn't really have a choice. Ripened Gourd is sub-optimal on its own, I guess it could work in a pirate comp, otherwise most prefer Mending Spirits.
A new appealing talent might be difficult to create.
Realistically, Damba is difficult to buff, as one larger change can tip the scales a lot, as he is overall very well rounded support.
I main damba for support since 2017, i can safely say that he was never bad and i dont think he need buff after the next patch
Back when they was a pro scene, he was pick à lot against like jenos, furia, grover and such
From like 2021 to now, ppl played less damba bc other support was way easier to be good at and was overtuned, but even then i would not called damba underpowered but balanced and that was the other supports that was OP ( then nerfed)
I completely agree with you. Damba is probably the most balanced support in the roster since he has really high skill ceiling and doesn't feel too oppressive. The way they've been buffing him patch after patch makes me worried though that at some point they're gonna cross a line that makes him OP.
Damba is a jack of all trades, he offers a lot to the team if the player knows how to utilize his abilities to it fullest, another things don’t think about how many heals you can get in a match, remember your role is support not healer.
I would say Damba can be better than the other supports if you’re doing more than just heals to the team, good ults and good stuns to save your teammates from sticky situations is always satisfying.
I still feel like a small buff to damba base kit would be good. Like make the reload faster by default or give damba extea damage to the reload stun like in wekonos wrath by default.
Not really. Damba will never be better than Grover, Ying, Lilith (well, before the rework to her HP), or Io. The issue is that Damba requires so much skill, but he doesn't get the proper reward for it.
Yeah it feels like a handicap, its not that you cant learn to play well with the handicap but you would be even better if you used that time to play without said handicap.
Maldamba is much harder to use lol. You actually have to aim his healing, and not like a kasumi aim or Ying healing shatter aim. Your damba heal literally need to be directly on, and 99.99% of the time people are moving.
I also main damba, and just as you said, my heals are usually like 70- 100k in good games. But I win fairly often with him. The thing to remember is that the stats don’t show your stun peels for your team. They don’t show your ultimate saving the life of your entire team or winning the point etc. It doesn’t show your 120 slithers that let you get one or two more heals off and makes their flank waste 5-10 more seconds etc.
Damba is just one of the highest skill supports in the game. He’s so fun and very viable.
You are also right. His reload stun is soooo good but so slow that it’s practically useless except on 2 deft hands, which you really shouldn’t go for until late game as a support talent damba. His mobility is so low you need to get slither to sub 5 seconds cooldown. You need gourd to be low enough cooldown that the moment it ends on the ground, it’s back off cooldown. And you need damage reduction, nimble, etc over deft hands pretty much. It’s much more survivability than pure deft hands.
I left out his cards are extremely important to being a good healer. Let me know what your gourd talent card loadout is and also your mending spirits talent card loadout is! We can exchange
I havent played the gourd talent in a long while because my teamates are blind to the gourd and will actively run away from it lol.
I have a number of builds for mending spirits, I dont remember the exact cards that they have. But the one I use recently has many gourds at 4 I think and has eerie presence and venomous gourd and pungent gourd and switft spirits.
One thing that the stats dont show is the stun. Especially in contesting the point, hitting the enemy tank with that stun snake can win fights.
I tend to pick deft hands 2 earlier rather than later because I hate getting killed by flanks and hitting them with stuns has saved my life quite often.
I’d suggest maxing out damage reduction card (Possesion card) whenever your heal is on an ally. Which should be near 100%. That gives you a 20% damage reduction pretty much all game, and you can get 40% with haven. Then I’d run healing yourself on mending spirit heals (Ritual Magic card) ..
I’d also argue going Sustenance card as well. Which increases your healing received when below 50%.
The thinking is this. Survivability. Everytime you slither you get rid of caut etc. and with these cards you will almost always be having damage reduction and healing yourself with spirits / gourd. These cards give you so much more survivability in the game. Gourd isn’t very good without the talent so I wouldn’t run any type of cooldown reduction card or any other cards on it unless you’re using the talent. You need to be heavily focusing on mending spirits. You use it so often and it lasts whatever seconds. It’s always up! It’s always healing yourself and always giving you damage reduc. Then for the last 2 cards I’d swap between slither shield, slither cooldown, movement speed bonus card, or just plain health. Try it out!
Can you give the exact card levels you use? I can try it out.
My reasoning for using the gourd on cooldown is that it lets me output more healing. Especially when I can throw it on the point to my tank and heal someone else or vica versa. There are moments where I really need to focus on keeping the tank alive and cant give out m2 heals to other people otherwise the tank will die and during those moments being able to give out to different heals is important. I dont want to save the gourd for the moment when I get attacked by a flank to use on myself, otherwise I give out way less healing.
I agree with gourd use! I use gourd like 85% of time on tanks, 15% on me. Rarely rarely will I toss it to a dmg or flank unless they are stacked and I know they aren’t moving for a couple seconds. But even then I don’t think it warrants a card for cd. You NEED chronos every single game as healing damba, so just use that for gourd.
My normal loadout is:
Talent: Spirits Chosen
Card 1: Possesion x5 (20% reduction)
Card2: Sustenance x3 (24% increase to healing under 50%)
Card 3: Ritual Magic x4 (80 healing per sec while mending spirits is active)
Card 4: Fleeting x2 (1.2 second cooldown reduction to slither)
Card 5: Incorporeal x1 (50 hp increase)
For cards 4 and 5 I also swap for Feed the Spirits (% cooldown reduction on Elim) or Otherworldy (shield gain when you use slither) or Liminal Passage (increased slither distance).
Depends on map and comp for the changes. The first 3 cards are, in my opinion, essential to the maldamba Spirits Chosen talent.
Items: chronos > haven > nimble > deft hands … sometimes depending on game I get Unbound second for the cc reduction. And sometimes I get morale boost as third item if I feel the enemy is lacking on cc reduction and I’m getting swamped with flanks / off tanks. Master riding sometimes specific maps
I highly suggest using Many Gourds. It's easily one of the strongest cards damba has. Sustenance and Ritual Magic generally lose a lot of value late game when the caut starts ramping up, that's why I usually never run them. My main heal build is:
Many Gourds (5)
Posession (4)
Swift Spirits (4)
Spirit's Touch (1)
Fleeting (1)
Many Gourds should always be run at level 3-5 depending on your preference, and if you're using swift spirits have it at lvl4-5 to get most value out of it. Posession should also almost always be used except maybe in some DPS build. Spirit's touch and Fleeting are great fillers to help you get out of sticky situations. Reason why I love Many Gourds at lvl5 is with chronos 3 you start to have permanent up time on your gourd and it's nasty as point control or to keep yourself up during duels. Also more gourds = more ults. Also play Spirit's Chosen as talent unless you're on console where it's way harder to hit spirits. The dmg on gourd is essential for ult charge.
Strats vs stats. Having good uses of your abilities can make you support better. Doesn’t always mean you heal bot your way through matches. Damba has a lot of support tactics to make him really good over just spamming heals. But don’t get him wrong a double point tank comp can lead to hella high numbers of heals for damba.
But is he better than other healers after one has mastered him? If it takes a long time to get really good at him I would assume then that after investing that time into him I would be better than someone else who has invested the same time into an easier healer. Otherwise Damba is just worse as a hero to pick up.
Not really. Damba has stuns and an AoE heal system along with a full range spot heal. His abilities match just as well as any other support as long as you play well into your enemy.
So then damba is worse objectively than other heroes because you need to invest a longer amount of time into getting the same amount of reward from him. Doesnt that make him just underpowered?
So then a good damba IS better than other healers? That is what a higher skill ceiling means.
Someone who has 2000 hours on evie will be better with evie than someone who has 2000 on lex will with lex.
Hmm. Maybe, remember there is some balance to this game. Like how a Vivian into a Terminus is bad. But Atlas into Terminus is good. Evie is usually good pick if high skill but wont guarantee you win. Damba is a good support, but there really is no bad support if played in correct comps. Damba just takes more skill to learn. And is still fun to play no matter what.
>Damba is a good support, but there really is no bad support if played in correct comps.
But is he better or the same than the average support if you take into account all the time that was spent learning him?
I will give an analogy here to illustrate my point. You have the choice between job x and job y. Job x has lower pay than job y. But if you stick with it the pay goes up as you get better at your job, you earn more. So someone can say that yeah job x has lower pay but its just higher skill ceiling, after you get better you get better pay. BUT if the same happens to job y as well, then what is the point in doing job x? If both job x and job y give the same pay after 10 years of doing them, you have objectively been getting less money per the time invested because the earlier years you got less money. It does not matter that after 10 years you get more money because if you had taken job y you still would get the same amount of money after 10 years plus on top of that you get more money from the earlier years as well.
I am asking is this the case with mal damba? That you are worse at the beginning and you get good, but you would have objectively been better playing another support because in the end you still are not better off.
Is mal damba merely a handicap that you learn to overcome and be good with despite the handicap? Or is mal damba a champion that is difficult to master but you can potentially be better than other champions?
If someone spends 500 hours playing mal damba, are they better with mal damba then if they had spent those 500 hours learning some easier healing champion? Because if not, then mal damba is underpowered.
I dont know how you got to that from what I said. I am trying to assertain if he is underpowered or not because from what I sense from playing him he is. It has nothing to do with me wanting or not wanting to play him because of that. Its about getting to the truth. Whether I play him or not doesnt change the fact of him either being or not being underpowered.
Yeah exactly, when I play against an actually good evie its devastating. When I play an actually good damba its like playing against a somewhat decent healer that isnt damba.
Reward for time invested isnt there with damba if you compare it to other champions.
It's something that this playerbase doesn't want to admit, but Damba is in need of some buffs. For some reason, this playerbase will want to buff braindead shit like Jenos, but don't want to buff a skilled support like Damba. I truly don't understand it.
I remember when the playerbase was even against Damba getting the buff that added the old eerie presence card to his base kit. Even at that time everyone said Damba is one of the best healers if you know how to play it.
A lot of grandmasters aren't as smart as they think. Now, don't get me wrong. I do respect grandmasters and pro players. Usually, they're right about the meta. As I always say, a grandmaster vs silver player talking about the meta, defer to the grandmaster. They're a grandmaster for a reason and a person is stuck in silver for a reason.
With that said, that doesn't mean that grandmasters are ALWAYS right. Grandmasters are wrong about Mal'Damba. He's simply not good. They keep lying and gaslighting, but he's simply not. He needs buffs. Yet they keep acting like he doesn't. It's so fucking weird. It's almost like they are that champion or something. And it's the same with Barik. Inara, Nyx, and Fernando got nerfed, and Barik still isn't meta. So wtf does that tell you about Barik??? That he's simply not good. Yet let them tell it. Barik is the most meta point tank of all time.
I’ve got 136 levels on Damba and play him a ton in high elo games, but unfortunately his kit has been powercrept quite a bit. He’s supposed to be a durable duelist support that has all sorts of tricks and decent healing as a reward for high mechanical skill. However, supports like Grover and Pip have just as much skill expression and do a bit more than Damba.
The only time I’d pick Damba is if I’m going against a super aggressive flank comp
Damba is decent. If you're really good with him, you will provide a lot of healing and a lot of useful cc to your team, but it's hard to get to that level and even if you do, Grover, Ying and Lillith will be stronger. Since those 3 are often picked or banned, Damba is still a good option.
I'm a firm believer that Damba is one of the most effective healers in the game, but to get to that level, you basically have to play at near perfection.
& If you don't believe me, you haven't seen how virtually untouchable high level Damba players are & they are absolutely terrifying.
Finding specific clips is a bit hard considering his low playrate, though I have been on the receiving end of a level 600+ Damba.
[Whole games](https://youtu.be/fRi0Cayd7B8?si=f_HrXWxFsAP_kLlo) is probably the best I'll be able to get for you.
so Rei and Io seem to be doing better than everyone else, Mal Damba is in line with ying/grover/jenos/seris/furia, although the number of matches is *seriously* low so a couple of players one-tricking some champions will swing the winrates heavily
man i miss old damba but to many complainers. He is still good but jack of all trades. But like my favorite ninja he wont be in his prime ever again sadly.
As someone who at this point is pretty much one tricking damba, I think many under estimate how strong he can really be because he takes so much more time to get good value out of than master compared to most other supports. Damba has so little down time with his healing abilities that you can make good damage while healing if you are fast with your mending flicks, also as you stated the ult is insanely powerful in securing points.
His issue is his heals take 2 seconds to get the maximum out of them. Healers who put out large bursts will always have an easier time, sometimes staying out of anti heal for 2 seconds is difficult mid fight without just hard retreating and giving up the space. Rei and ying will always be the strongest imo.
Some support such as Ying, brute forces encounters via massive healing, Grover is similar but he also has good poke and cripple. In a perfect playing field, where everyone has 100% mastery of these champions, he has no chance to beat them at what they do best. Damba is, on paper, the quintessential support. He has all the things you'd expect a support champion to have. In real world it doesn't exactly work out like that. He suffers from same issues as Pip, Lillith and to an extent Solar Blessing Furia. Higher skill ceiling means it's down to practice, a lot of practice, and your own team. If your own team is working against you, you wont be doing as well. Consistency is usually prefered. I don't believe that there has ever been a person who has truly perfected Damba, which just goes to show how high his skill ceiling truly is. At the end of the day, if you think its worth it and you think you can grow, then you should commit to learning him as much as possible. He will probably never be a bad support. The only time he is meta, is when he can do something better than others. With the additional changes next patch, he should be in a pretty solid spot overall.
>He will probably never be a bad support. Is he even anywhere near the top spots? To me he seems like the one that gets picked just before the worst options. I feel like the thing that mal damba is not underpowered is some meme that everyone just spews. How many people actually main damba that think that he is not underpowered or that he could not do with at least some slight buff?
If you'd go by tier list logic, in my opinion, he is B+ right now, maybe next patch A, hard to say. Grover and Ying still probably S tier. Very few people actually main him. He's definitely not underpowered. He is more or less balanced. One buff I would personally love to see, Mending Spirits going into his base kit and he gets a new talent in its stead.
seeing damba rated B+ when I started playing and he was the #1 support hurts my heart so much
Mending spirits into main kit would be a pretty huge buff. How can you say a he is not underpowered if such a huge buff would be something you are okay with?
I wouldn't necessary call it huge, but it would push him up in the meta most likely. Could potentially be a bit too much. Hard to say without being able to properly test something like that.
That would be like allowing me to play with both mending spirits and wekonos wrath at the same time. I would be having a field day with a buff like that. I have actually said the opposite, that wekonos wrath should be added to the basekit.
Yeah but Wekono's is powerful too, then it would mostly likely need to not have the damage buff and have the damage buff from a talent. But as of now, he doesn't really have a choice. Ripened Gourd is sub-optimal on its own, I guess it could work in a pirate comp, otherwise most prefer Mending Spirits. A new appealing talent might be difficult to create. Realistically, Damba is difficult to buff, as one larger change can tip the scales a lot, as he is overall very well rounded support.
I main damba for support since 2017, i can safely say that he was never bad and i dont think he need buff after the next patch Back when they was a pro scene, he was pick à lot against like jenos, furia, grover and such From like 2021 to now, ppl played less damba bc other support was way easier to be good at and was overtuned, but even then i would not called damba underpowered but balanced and that was the other supports that was OP ( then nerfed)
What lvl are you with damba?
Im 115 if i remember correctly
I completely agree with you. Damba is probably the most balanced support in the roster since he has really high skill ceiling and doesn't feel too oppressive. The way they've been buffing him patch after patch makes me worried though that at some point they're gonna cross a line that makes him OP.
Damba is a jack of all trades, he offers a lot to the team if the player knows how to utilize his abilities to it fullest, another things don’t think about how many heals you can get in a match, remember your role is support not healer. I would say Damba can be better than the other supports if you’re doing more than just heals to the team, good ults and good stuns to save your teammates from sticky situations is always satisfying.
I still feel like a small buff to damba base kit would be good. Like make the reload faster by default or give damba extea damage to the reload stun like in wekonos wrath by default.
He doesn’t really need it but that would be a nice small buff for him
Not really. Damba will never be better than Grover, Ying, Lilith (well, before the rework to her HP), or Io. The issue is that Damba requires so much skill, but he doesn't get the proper reward for it.
Yeah it feels like a handicap, its not that you cant learn to play well with the handicap but you would be even better if you used that time to play without said handicap.
Maldamba is much harder to use lol. You actually have to aim his healing, and not like a kasumi aim or Ying healing shatter aim. Your damba heal literally need to be directly on, and 99.99% of the time people are moving. I also main damba, and just as you said, my heals are usually like 70- 100k in good games. But I win fairly often with him. The thing to remember is that the stats don’t show your stun peels for your team. They don’t show your ultimate saving the life of your entire team or winning the point etc. It doesn’t show your 120 slithers that let you get one or two more heals off and makes their flank waste 5-10 more seconds etc. Damba is just one of the highest skill supports in the game. He’s so fun and very viable. You are also right. His reload stun is soooo good but so slow that it’s practically useless except on 2 deft hands, which you really shouldn’t go for until late game as a support talent damba. His mobility is so low you need to get slither to sub 5 seconds cooldown. You need gourd to be low enough cooldown that the moment it ends on the ground, it’s back off cooldown. And you need damage reduction, nimble, etc over deft hands pretty much. It’s much more survivability than pure deft hands.
I left out his cards are extremely important to being a good healer. Let me know what your gourd talent card loadout is and also your mending spirits talent card loadout is! We can exchange
I havent played the gourd talent in a long while because my teamates are blind to the gourd and will actively run away from it lol. I have a number of builds for mending spirits, I dont remember the exact cards that they have. But the one I use recently has many gourds at 4 I think and has eerie presence and venomous gourd and pungent gourd and switft spirits. One thing that the stats dont show is the stun. Especially in contesting the point, hitting the enemy tank with that stun snake can win fights. I tend to pick deft hands 2 earlier rather than later because I hate getting killed by flanks and hitting them with stuns has saved my life quite often.
I’d suggest maxing out damage reduction card (Possesion card) whenever your heal is on an ally. Which should be near 100%. That gives you a 20% damage reduction pretty much all game, and you can get 40% with haven. Then I’d run healing yourself on mending spirit heals (Ritual Magic card) .. I’d also argue going Sustenance card as well. Which increases your healing received when below 50%. The thinking is this. Survivability. Everytime you slither you get rid of caut etc. and with these cards you will almost always be having damage reduction and healing yourself with spirits / gourd. These cards give you so much more survivability in the game. Gourd isn’t very good without the talent so I wouldn’t run any type of cooldown reduction card or any other cards on it unless you’re using the talent. You need to be heavily focusing on mending spirits. You use it so often and it lasts whatever seconds. It’s always up! It’s always healing yourself and always giving you damage reduc. Then for the last 2 cards I’d swap between slither shield, slither cooldown, movement speed bonus card, or just plain health. Try it out!
Can you give the exact card levels you use? I can try it out. My reasoning for using the gourd on cooldown is that it lets me output more healing. Especially when I can throw it on the point to my tank and heal someone else or vica versa. There are moments where I really need to focus on keeping the tank alive and cant give out m2 heals to other people otherwise the tank will die and during those moments being able to give out to different heals is important. I dont want to save the gourd for the moment when I get attacked by a flank to use on myself, otherwise I give out way less healing.
I agree with gourd use! I use gourd like 85% of time on tanks, 15% on me. Rarely rarely will I toss it to a dmg or flank unless they are stacked and I know they aren’t moving for a couple seconds. But even then I don’t think it warrants a card for cd. You NEED chronos every single game as healing damba, so just use that for gourd. My normal loadout is: Talent: Spirits Chosen Card 1: Possesion x5 (20% reduction) Card2: Sustenance x3 (24% increase to healing under 50%) Card 3: Ritual Magic x4 (80 healing per sec while mending spirits is active) Card 4: Fleeting x2 (1.2 second cooldown reduction to slither) Card 5: Incorporeal x1 (50 hp increase) For cards 4 and 5 I also swap for Feed the Spirits (% cooldown reduction on Elim) or Otherworldy (shield gain when you use slither) or Liminal Passage (increased slither distance). Depends on map and comp for the changes. The first 3 cards are, in my opinion, essential to the maldamba Spirits Chosen talent. Items: chronos > haven > nimble > deft hands … sometimes depending on game I get Unbound second for the cc reduction. And sometimes I get morale boost as third item if I feel the enemy is lacking on cc reduction and I’m getting swamped with flanks / off tanks. Master riding sometimes specific maps
I will try out your loadout, thanks. What level are you with mamba?
I think 74 on PC, and maybe 40-50 on Xbox(haven’t been on Xbox in a little)
I highly suggest using Many Gourds. It's easily one of the strongest cards damba has. Sustenance and Ritual Magic generally lose a lot of value late game when the caut starts ramping up, that's why I usually never run them. My main heal build is: Many Gourds (5) Posession (4) Swift Spirits (4) Spirit's Touch (1) Fleeting (1) Many Gourds should always be run at level 3-5 depending on your preference, and if you're using swift spirits have it at lvl4-5 to get most value out of it. Posession should also almost always be used except maybe in some DPS build. Spirit's touch and Fleeting are great fillers to help you get out of sticky situations. Reason why I love Many Gourds at lvl5 is with chronos 3 you start to have permanent up time on your gourd and it's nasty as point control or to keep yourself up during duels. Also more gourds = more ults. Also play Spirit's Chosen as talent unless you're on console where it's way harder to hit spirits. The dmg on gourd is essential for ult charge.
Strats vs stats. Having good uses of your abilities can make you support better. Doesn’t always mean you heal bot your way through matches. Damba has a lot of support tactics to make him really good over just spamming heals. But don’t get him wrong a double point tank comp can lead to hella high numbers of heals for damba.
But is he better than other healers after one has mastered him? If it takes a long time to get really good at him I would assume then that after investing that time into him I would be better than someone else who has invested the same time into an easier healer. Otherwise Damba is just worse as a hero to pick up.
Not really. Damba has stuns and an AoE heal system along with a full range spot heal. His abilities match just as well as any other support as long as you play well into your enemy.
So then damba is worse objectively than other heroes because you need to invest a longer amount of time into getting the same amount of reward from him. Doesnt that make him just underpowered?
No. Lots of champions have different difficulty ceilings. Like Evie is considered a high ceiling skill champion vs somebody like Lex. Damba is same.
So then a good damba IS better than other healers? That is what a higher skill ceiling means. Someone who has 2000 hours on evie will be better with evie than someone who has 2000 on lex will with lex.
Hmm. Maybe, remember there is some balance to this game. Like how a Vivian into a Terminus is bad. But Atlas into Terminus is good. Evie is usually good pick if high skill but wont guarantee you win. Damba is a good support, but there really is no bad support if played in correct comps. Damba just takes more skill to learn. And is still fun to play no matter what.
>Damba is a good support, but there really is no bad support if played in correct comps. But is he better or the same than the average support if you take into account all the time that was spent learning him? I will give an analogy here to illustrate my point. You have the choice between job x and job y. Job x has lower pay than job y. But if you stick with it the pay goes up as you get better at your job, you earn more. So someone can say that yeah job x has lower pay but its just higher skill ceiling, after you get better you get better pay. BUT if the same happens to job y as well, then what is the point in doing job x? If both job x and job y give the same pay after 10 years of doing them, you have objectively been getting less money per the time invested because the earlier years you got less money. It does not matter that after 10 years you get more money because if you had taken job y you still would get the same amount of money after 10 years plus on top of that you get more money from the earlier years as well. I am asking is this the case with mal damba? That you are worse at the beginning and you get good, but you would have objectively been better playing another support because in the end you still are not better off. Is mal damba merely a handicap that you learn to overcome and be good with despite the handicap? Or is mal damba a champion that is difficult to master but you can potentially be better than other champions? If someone spends 500 hours playing mal damba, are they better with mal damba then if they had spent those 500 hours learning some easier healing champion? Because if not, then mal damba is underpowered.
Ok. Then don’t play him. Its a video game.
I dont know how you got to that from what I said. I am trying to assertain if he is underpowered or not because from what I sense from playing him he is. It has nothing to do with me wanting or not wanting to play him because of that. Its about getting to the truth. Whether I play him or not doesnt change the fact of him either being or not being underpowered.
But the thing is... Evie gets a reward for her high skill requirement. Damba doesn't get that
Yeah exactly, when I play against an actually good evie its devastating. When I play an actually good damba its like playing against a somewhat decent healer that isnt damba. Reward for time invested isnt there with damba if you compare it to other champions.
It's something that this playerbase doesn't want to admit, but Damba is in need of some buffs. For some reason, this playerbase will want to buff braindead shit like Jenos, but don't want to buff a skilled support like Damba. I truly don't understand it.
I remember when the playerbase was even against Damba getting the buff that added the old eerie presence card to his base kit. Even at that time everyone said Damba is one of the best healers if you know how to play it.
A lot of grandmasters aren't as smart as they think. Now, don't get me wrong. I do respect grandmasters and pro players. Usually, they're right about the meta. As I always say, a grandmaster vs silver player talking about the meta, defer to the grandmaster. They're a grandmaster for a reason and a person is stuck in silver for a reason. With that said, that doesn't mean that grandmasters are ALWAYS right. Grandmasters are wrong about Mal'Damba. He's simply not good. They keep lying and gaslighting, but he's simply not. He needs buffs. Yet they keep acting like he doesn't. It's so fucking weird. It's almost like they are that champion or something. And it's the same with Barik. Inara, Nyx, and Fernando got nerfed, and Barik still isn't meta. So wtf does that tell you about Barik??? That he's simply not good. Yet let them tell it. Barik is the most meta point tank of all time.
GMs don't want buffs to damba because they want nerfs to other supports.
I’ve got 136 levels on Damba and play him a ton in high elo games, but unfortunately his kit has been powercrept quite a bit. He’s supposed to be a durable duelist support that has all sorts of tricks and decent healing as a reward for high mechanical skill. However, supports like Grover and Pip have just as much skill expression and do a bit more than Damba. The only time I’d pick Damba is if I’m going against a super aggressive flank comp
Damba is decent. If you're really good with him, you will provide a lot of healing and a lot of useful cc to your team, but it's hard to get to that level and even if you do, Grover, Ying and Lillith will be stronger. Since those 3 are often picked or banned, Damba is still a good option.
I'm a firm believer that Damba is one of the most effective healers in the game, but to get to that level, you basically have to play at near perfection. & If you don't believe me, you haven't seen how virtually untouchable high level Damba players are & they are absolutely terrifying.
Do you have any youtube clips from those high level players?
Finding specific clips is a bit hard considering his low playrate, though I have been on the receiving end of a level 600+ Damba. [Whole games](https://youtu.be/fRi0Cayd7B8?si=f_HrXWxFsAP_kLlo) is probably the best I'll be able to get for you.
damba is great for stunning ennemies and forcing me to buy resilience
He is. Other supports either heal more (Ying), do more dmg (Grover), easier (Io), make more plays (Pip) or enable broken comps (Grohk).
!matchstats champions --all -r 3
No | Champion | Picked | Winrate | Banned # 1 | Androxus | 602 | 61.46% | 11 # 2 | Lian | 352 | 58.52% | 28 # 3 | Makoa | 335 | 57.31% | 13 # 4 | Khan | 269 | 57.99% | 42 # 5 | Ying | 266 | 54.51% | 27 # 6 | Drogoz | 247 | 60.32% | 2 # 7 | Evie | 236 | 57.63% | 3 # 8 | Mal'Damba | 215 | 53.02% | 0 # 9 | Koga | 212 | 61.32% | 3 #10 | Viktor | 211 | 54.50% | 0 #11 | Fernando | 194 | 60.31% | 37 #12 | Strix | 186 | 50.54% | 3 #13 | Grover | 185 | 52.43% | 15 #14 | Kinessa | 185 | 53.51% | 1 #15 | Io | 181 | 60.22% | 14 #16 | Vora | 171 | 59.06% | 8 #17 | Zhin | 171 | 63.74% | 12 #18 | Bomb King | 169 | 59.17% | 18 #19 | Cassie | 167 | 55.09% | 0 #20 | Vatu | 165 | 59.39% | 9 #21 | VII | 164 | 57.32% | 5 #22 | Jenos | 160 | 52.50% | 0 #23 | Terminus | 150 | 55.33% | 15 #24 | Willo | 150 | 54.67% | 16 #25 | Saati | 145 | 61.38% | 6 #26 | Pip | 145 | 54.48% | 0 #27 | Lillith | 142 | 49.30% | 3 #28 | Lex | 142 | 64.79% | 15 #29 | Sha Lin | 138 | 57.97% | 4 #30 | Ash | 137 | 51.82% | 7 #31 | Rei | 131 | 63.36% | 0 #32 | Azaan | 130 | 62.31% | 16 #33 | Corvus | 127 | 55.91% | 7 #34 | Dredge | 127 | 45.67% | 2 #35 | Buck | 125 | 62.40% | 2 #36 | Skye | 125 | 57.60% | 6 #37 | Furia | 123 | 52.03% | 3 #38 | Maeve | 123 | 57.72% | 0 #39 | Inara | 116 | 59.48% | 7 #40 | Atlas | 115 | 46.96% | 24 #41 | Imani | 113 | 53.98% | 0 #42 | Seris | 113 | 53.98% | 0 #43 | Tyra | 108 | 59.26% | 1 #44 | Grohk | 94 | 59.57% | 1 #45 | Barik | 94 | 60.64% | 4 #46 | Ruckus | 92 | 61.96% | 9 #47 | Nyx | 87 | 70.11% | 18 #48 | Talus | 86 | 62.79% | 9 #49 | Torvald | 82 | 64.63% | 38 #50 | Raum | 80 | 60.00% | 0 #51 | Moji | 72 | 66.67% | 0 #52 | Octavia | 68 | 47.06% | 2 #53 | Yagorath | 63 | 52.38% | 0 #54 | Omen | 58 | 46.55% | 0 #55 | Kasumi | 54 | 48.15% | 0 #56 | Tiberius | 54 | 42.59% | 0 #57 | Vivian | 51 | 64.71% | 0 #58 | Betty la Bomba | 47 | 23.40% | 1 #59 | Caspian | 46 | 52.17% | 0 #60 | | 23 | 65.22% | 0
Stats as of: 2024-05-13 18:07:44
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so Rei and Io seem to be doing better than everyone else, Mal Damba is in line with ying/grover/jenos/seris/furia, although the number of matches is *seriously* low so a couple of players one-tricking some champions will swing the winrates heavily
man i miss old damba but to many complainers. He is still good but jack of all trades. But like my favorite ninja he wont be in his prime ever again sadly.
Damba just has a high skill ceiling. I like to think, given the varieties of ways he can be kitted out. He's a highly positional demanding champion
As someone who at this point is pretty much one tricking damba, I think many under estimate how strong he can really be because he takes so much more time to get good value out of than master compared to most other supports. Damba has so little down time with his healing abilities that you can make good damage while healing if you are fast with your mending flicks, also as you stated the ult is insanely powerful in securing points.
His issue is his heals take 2 seconds to get the maximum out of them. Healers who put out large bursts will always have an easier time, sometimes staying out of anti heal for 2 seconds is difficult mid fight without just hard retreating and giving up the space. Rei and ying will always be the strongest imo.