We recently published a post explaining why we’re hopeful for the future of Destiny. One of our arguments was that there is a huge legacy of cards to enjoy.

However, if we’re going to be able to take advantage of the legacy of characters in Destiny, many of them need balancing to make them competitive.

If FFG don’t do it, I believe this should be the first move by the continuing committee as it has the potential to dramatically open up the game without the need for more cards. One power of a community team is they have ability to be nimble, so they should not be afraid of making bold balances, as these can be rapidly corrected if a problem arises.

But which characters need balancing? In typical echobase fashion, I’m going to analyse some data to answer that question.

Here’s the data I’ve got:

1. I have every character lineup from every Top Cut in the entire 19/20 Prime Season. This means I’m only looking at characters in Standard (Legacies onwards) and during the Spark of Hope meta. This adds up to 620 decks, containing 1527 characters.
2. I have a list of every card in standard thanks to swdestinydb.

By comparing the two, I can find out every character that’s never featured in any Top Cut (in the current meta). I think this is a good indication that the character is currently over-costed.

There are 143 characters in standard (not including Covert Missions). Of these 143 characters, 62 have never been in any 19/20 Prime Top Cuts. That’s 43% of characters.

For completeness, here is the full list of all 62 absent characters, sorted from worst value (1 = probably needs balancing) to best value (62 = might not need balancing) using the programme I wrote to calculate a very rough value for all characters:

	set	character		set	character
1	CONV	Chewbacca	32	AoN	Outer Rim Outlaw
2	AtG	Savage Opress	33	LEG	Boba Fett
3	TPG	Rey	34	AoN	Fenn Rau
4	LEG	Battle Droid	35	SoH	Wicket
5	LEG	Wedge Antilles	36	LEG	Jedha Partisan
6	LEG	Hondo Ohnaka	37	CONV	Ahsoka Tano
7	WotF	Boss Nass	38	CONV	Maz Kanata
8	LEG	Tarkin	39	SoH	Amilyn Holdo
9	WotF	Count Dooku	40	WotF	Rex
10	WotF	Fifth Brother	41	RIV	Jawa Scavenger
11	WotF	Luke Skywalker	42	WotF	Executioner
12	CONV	Asajj Ventress	43	WotF	Ezra Bridger
13	LEG	Han Solo	44	AoN	Clawdite Shapeshifter
14	AtG	Barriss Offee	45	RIV	Anakin Skywalker
15	CONV	Dengar	46	AtG	Luce
16	AtG	Nightbrother	47	LEG	Veteran Stormtrooper
17	SoH	Old Daka	48	AtG	Val
18	AtG	“Mauler” Mithel	49	AtG	L3-37
19	LEG	Luke Skywalker	50	CONV	Enfys Nest
20	AtG	Qui-Gon Jinn	51	LEG	Jedi Temple Guard
21	LEG	Jar Jar Binks	52	LEG	Rose
22	RIV	Ketsu Onyo	53	AtG	Force Mystic
23	CONV	K-2SO	54	WotF	Jabba The Hutt
24	LEG	Palpatine	55	LEG	Finn
25	WotF	Force Sensitive Outcast	56	CONV	Sly Moore
26	CONV	Ezra Bridger	57	WotF	Sebulba
27	WotF	Jedi Sentinel	58	LEG	Dark Advisor
28	AtG	Super Battle Droid	59	SoH	Dark Mystic
29	CONV	Obi-Wan Kenobi	60	LEG	Bib Fortuna
30	CONV	Kes Dameron	61	CONV	Vigilant Jedi
31	SoH	Nightsister Zombie	62	SoH	Youngling

Some of these characters were a surprise to me. A number of them feel very fairly costed, but nevertheless none of them have made any Top Cuts during this long Prime Season.

I believe many of these characters need balancing, or they’ll sit forever in your binder. The characters at the top of my list aren’t necessarily the first that need balancing: my points value system sure isn’t perfect: a few did see play pre-Spark of Hope, such as Rey, Hondo, Tarkin and Dooku, plus characters like Chewbacca will be stronger once Covert Missions lands.

Nevertheless, in the current meta they just don’t seem to be able to cut it, and might need a little help or else we may never see them again:

For comparison, R2-D2 is our most popular character featuring in 118 Top Cut decks (19% of all 620 decks) followed by C-3PO on 112.

Taking the sting out of the most powerful decks in the meta is the other way to open it up to new decks. I’ve already written that I think hero droids urgently need another nerf as they continue to be the only deck to consistently outperform their already high representation. Click the image below for that article

Following close behind R2 and 3PO, our next most popular characters are: Sentinel Messenger: 95 appearances, ReyLo: 93, Chopper: 90, General Grievous (Convergence): 75, Palpatine (Convergence): 67, Aphra: 48, Watto: 44 and Mandalorian Commando: 41.

I don’t think any of these characters need an errata or points balance immediately, though these are ones to watch.

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