As promised months earlier, the developers have finally made their adjustments to Finn’s ability kit. We’ve compiled some quick tips to the changes and what they mean for SWGoH players.

Resource Refunds

With the large changes in Finn’s leader ability, CG have refunded all the ability mats and credits players have used towards the Balanced Tactics leader ability.

This refund will differ depending on how far players took the ability, but anyone who zeta’d Finn will receive all 20 zeta mats and also any of the omegas, Mk III purple mats, and credits used on the ability.

Finn will revert to Level 1 Balanced Tactics leader ability and players can decide whether to re-zeta Finn or use those resources elsewhere.

Notable Kit Changes

• There were significant changes to Finn’s leader ability
• The amount of Turn Meter that Finn and his allies gain from activating Expose has been reduced. In exchange, Finn and his allies can reduce Exposed enemy’s Turn Meter.
• Finn’s leader now scales with the number of Resistance allies
• Resistance allies are now the only allies that can activate Turn Meter/Loss from Expose
• Finn’s ability to give Advantage to Resistance allies who have lost Foresight has been removed
• In general, it will be more difficult to create “infinite loops” with Finn’s lead, but Finn teams will take more turns and do more damage as the battle continues
• Finn’s Hold the Line ability now give Health and Protection recovery for all Resistance allies instead of giving Health Over Time
• Hold the Line also gives Finn the new Determination buff, which allows Finn to auto-taunt for any Resistance ally and then gain Retribution

Source: https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/199463/update-on-zfinn-changes-coming-next-update

Ability Changes in Detail

Crack Shot (Basic)

• Original – Upgrade 4: +5% Damage
• New – Upgrade 4: +3% More Damage
• Original Final Text – Deal Physical damage to target enemy. This attack deals 100% more damage to enemies that haven’t already been struck by it.
• New Final Text – Deal Physical damage to target enemy. This attack deals 10% more damage for each time the target has been struck by it (max 100%).

Hold the Line (Special)

• Original – Finn gains Advantage and Defense Up for 2 turns. Finn and Poe Dameron gain Heal Over Time (10%) for 2 turns.
• New – All Resistance allies recover 5% Health and Protection. Finn gains Advantage, Defense Up, and Taunt for 2 turns, and dispels all debuffs from all allies.
• Upgrades 1-6: +X% Health and Protection recovery
• Original Final Text – Finn gains Advantage and Defense Up for 2 turns and Dispels all debuffs from all allies. Finn and Poe Dameron gain Heal Over Time (20%) for 2 turns.
• New Final Text – All Resistance allies recover 20% Health and Protection. Finn gains Advantage, Defense Up, Taunt, and Determination for 2 turns, and dispels all debuffs from all allies.
• Determination: Whenever any other Resistance ally falls below 50% Health, Determination expires and Finn Taunts for 2 turns. If that ally was Taunting, it is dispelled. When Determination expires, Finn gains Retribution for 2 turns.

Takedown (Special)

• Original – Upgrade 7: +5% Damage
• New – Upgrade 7: This attack deals 50% more damage for each time the target has been struck by it (max 500%)
• Note: No longer does double damage to Raid Bosses.

Balance Tactics (Leader)

• Original – Resistance allies gain 15% Offense and 45% Defense, and other allies gain half that amount.
• New – Resistance allies have +30% Defense, Offense, and Potency, and other allies have half that amount.
• Original Final Text – Resistance allies gain 30% Offense and 60% Defense, and other allies gain half that amount. Whenever a Resistance ally loses Foresight, they gain Advantage for 2 turns and whenever an enemy takes damage from Expose, reduce the cooldowns of all Resistance allies by 1 and grant them 35% Turn Meter.
• New Final Text – Resistance allies have +60% Defense, Offense, and Potency, and other allies have half that amount. Each time they damage an Exposed enemy, all Resistance allies gain 3% Turn Meter and the target enemy loses 5% Turn Meter for each Resistance ally. Damaging an Exposed enemy also reduces Resistance allies’ cooldowns by 1.

Effects from Finn’s Changes

Primarily, the changes to Finn have been made to prevent the ability for a single team to solo Phase 3 of the heroic Sith Triumvirate Raid, but the changes were also made to future-proof Finn’s ability kit given the propensity for his leader ability to continually “break” game mechanics.

One of the bigger biggest effects of Finn’s kit changes is his ability to solo the entirety of the heroic AAT Raid with C-3PO as well as the solo of Phase 3 of HSTR. Prior to Finn’s changes, players could auto HAAT and Phase 3 of HSTR which, agree or not, did not seem to be within the developers’ desires for the character or the raids.

That said, theory-crafting is abound and new uses for the updated kit are already being discovered.

Skelturix has already developed a strategy using Finn’s update to manage about 30% of Phase 1 of HSTR with just a single team: JTR, Finn, BB8, R2D2, and C3PO

In general, Finn’s update will see the removal of the infinite loop possibilities through the leader ability, but allows Finn to work as an even stronger member of a JTR-led team.

The largest effect, however, in Finn’s leader ability comes to his PvP use.

PvP Changes

With Finn’s leadership seeing such major changes, Finn is no longer the best secondary Resistance leader. This will up end a lot of options for Territory Wars/Grand Arena, as Finn functions best under JTR’s lead now rather than creating a secondary Resistance team of his own.

Apart from the effects on teams for TW/GA, Arena will see some of the largest impacts from Finn’s change.

While a “traditional” all-Resistance zFinn team could not hold very well on Defense against the most recent meta teams, a team of zFinn, C-3PO, Resistance Trooper, Raid Han Solo, and Chewbacca could easily manage against Jedi Knight Revan teams. Recent theory-crafting also found that this same team, that could solo Phase 3 of HSTR, could also easily beat the brand new Darth Revan and beat him very quickly.

While the developers have been stating that changes were coming to Finn and his leadership for several months, it wasn’t until it was clear that Finn+C-3PO were capable of clearing just about any new characters CG could create that we saw the final push and refund of Finn’s zeta.

We at Gaming-fans.com are looking forward to providing more details as new uses for our updated Finn are developed. Happy Playing!

By Kaitco of Descendants of the Empire
Gaming-fans.com Senior Staff Writer