As some may have heard and/or seen, I've gotten a bit back into Dragon Ball the Breakers as of late. Whether it's because of my strange love/hate fixation with the asymmetrical game genre like it and DBD (and the antics that come with that), a need for a "filler" game to waste time with, or just wanting to see my tiny old man Create-a-Character somehow overcome the odds set against him... I've been making my way through the latest season and the Raider that has come with it:

Broly.
Specifically the Dragon Ball Super Broly - which most folks enjoy, myself included. And he makes sense as a Raider and I'm happy to see him getting a slot. That said... I do not currently like playing against Broly. At all.
It just seems like it is too easy for him to quickly and heavily put the Survivor team on the back foot in the early game, especially in skilled hands. To the point that it feels like the match is more or less over before it started or you're having to fight back from a serious deficit. Though, as always, a well-coordinated Survivor team (or with an inexperienced Broly player) can still pull out a victory - though usually one that still doesn't come together until Super Time Machine phase.
And, in having conversations here and there about it, I feel like I know why. A bit of personal pet peeve and some mechanics that I feel need some serious tweaking to make him more reasonable for a randomly assembled group of Survivors to deal with. All presented below in my usual unnecessarily long fashion beneath the Read More.
I've had issues with facing some Raiders before - specifically Frieza and Vegeta - due to their ease of camping downed Survivors and highlighting how few tools you have to deal with this remote camping mechanic. But there are tools you have to work around it: senzu beans, dodge rolling and defensive abilities to avoid the minions' attacks, and abilities to either give the person that got picked up their shield back immediately or multiple ways for said Survivor to escape as soon as they're picked up. Not to mention, you can deny Vegeta the ability to even have his Saibamen if you defeat the low-health first form and Frieza's minions disappear after a bit along with having sizeable blind spots.
Broly, however, I feel like there is very few counters to what he can do in competent hands. He starts in Level 2 so there's significant investment needed to be done by the Survivors to even be able to contest him, and his skillset allows him to traverse the map with sickening ease from the get-go and deny most attempts to escape him. I liken him a lot to Pinhead from DBD in that he very much requires a coordinated team effort to depose of him.
First off, he has a boosting move from the get-go (with a granted decently lengthy cooldown of 90s without point investment) that is also his break strike - an ability that can be used when being attacked to knock back enemies to alleviate pressure. With it he gets additional damage, speed, and an increased cooldown rate on his super moves. At Level 3 it also gives him an Energy Barrier that eats additional damage, and at Level 4 it automatically fires a swarm of ki blasts that home in on any nearby enemies.
That in and itself is a bit wild but its large cooldown keeps it from being too obnoxious and you can break the shield with enough damage to continue punishing him, even while evading the Level 4 ki blasts that come with it. The issue lies in the movement speed boost coupled with one of his other two abilities: his charge attack. This move has a paltry 25 second cooldown and, with the boost, allows him to traverse basically the entire map in one go.
So, the standard "Broly Opener" I have come to see in most games I play against him now is this: use boosting move, charge to one of the Survivor spawn locations (which are static, so that can be memorized) and assault the Survivors there within about five to ten seconds into the start of the match. A time window where you are unlikely to have gotten even Energy Level 1 to be able to use your transformation's health to try and tank the blows while you try to escape.
And escape in and of itself is horrendously difficult. His third ability is a draw-in with a sizeable range, which hard counters a lot of the more readily available escape moves like the Grappling Device and Change: Missile. And it lasts just as long as the Energy Barrier's duration. So the solution seems to be try and bait it out and then use your other escape tools - requiring Energy Level 1 and/or multiple escape tools. But even that often isn't enough because he still has that speed increase and can follow you as you flee if you don't also land some manner of stun on him (Solar Flare, Charming Pose, etc.) before you do so.
I do not claim to be the best at this game, but I've used a Level 1 Transformation (Bardock with Rebellion Spear, so I had an additional charge to get away) along with all three Active Skills listed above against Broly. Transform and bait out the gravity, Barrier for defense while I use the other two to get away, and even following up with the charge. By the time I've done all that and come out of transformation, I'm being meleed by Broly - not attacked with ki blasts from range, meleed. So he was able to keep up with me - possibly due to the lingering speed boost from his break strike but more likely being able to charge right back after me due to his charge being off cooldown already. Granted, I wasn't running a stun with that loadout (I've always had terrible luck consistently landing them) but it still feels a bit ridiculous.
The only universal solution I've found is to basically scatter and hide as best you can (which you can't always do very well with certain spawn locations on some maps) at the start of the map and see where he goes. This can be augmented a bit by Change Camouflage to try and reduce your visible profile or just blend in with your surroundings so he doesn't see you. Beyond that, if you were lucky enough to pull Instant Transmission from the gacha system the game has, using that to immediately escape if he dive-bombs your starting location is probably the best bet. Otherwise, if you haven't pulled any other options, you might have to run Grappling Device, Change Missile, and Charming Pose in three of your four Active Skills... and you can't guarantee newer players have the latter two unlocked/equipped.
And so, more than any of the other Raiders, it seems the strategy is to try and avoid Broly entirely as best you can while you cobble up the Change Energy and rush the Power Keys. You use your Dragon Change to escape and/or avoid him and buy time for your allies - fighting him (at least for me, admittedly not great at the combat in this game) is ill-advised as the act of him damaging you boosts his own Energy Gauge and gets him closer to evolving. Then either overwhelm him when everyone is at his energy level if he hasn't evolved yet, or overwhelm him during the Super Time Machine phase.
The balancing factor the game provides for dealing with him is that a Super Transphere will appear that is basically like a mini Shenron power-up (since there are no Dragon Balls on the map). You turn into Super Saiyan or Super Saiyan God Goku/Vegeta with the Level 2, Super Saiyan Blue of the same at Level 3, and Gogeta at Level 4. In the hands of a good Survivor who can dodge effectively and keep from just getting deleted by Broly, it can do a lot to whittle down his health. But there are problems.
For one, the first Super Transphere doesn't appear until (from what I can tell) 2-3 minutes into a match. With a Raider that can have multiple Survivors down in a matter of seconds after the match starts, it's a bit of slow starter. Plus, the Super Transphere - as far as I can tell anyway, it could be the Broly players actively not evolving until it's spawned - all spawn in order. Which could mean you have a Level 2 Transphere out as Broly hits Level 3, and thus your ability to harry him is drastically reduced... along with not being able to even get the next Transphere to spawn until the Survivor has been knocked out of the previous.
Which means that the Survivor has to actively seek to get knocked out of it once Broly's evolved, and I've seen many a Broly just... ignore them. They can't really bother you and you have so many good chase and combat tools that you can simply go after the other Survivors and kill them, continuing to tip the scales further in your favor. And/or you can engage them while everyone else is unable to join in and win the 1v1 because that match-up is always weighted in the Raider's favor.
But, as much as I do like to whine and complain, I'm also not one to just point out the problem and leave it at that. I feel like there's a couple ways that could balance things out (at least in the early game) and give Survivors a chance to do something. And I hope something similar (or perhaps something I haven't even thought of) does get changed in the next patch update of the game... whenever that is.
First and foremost is an adjustment to Broly's skills, either to a couple of them or the whole kit. Maybe the speed boost doesn't apply to the charge in Level 2 to keep him from flying across the map, or the charge's cooldown is longer (either overall or just at Level 2) so it can't be used with such impunity to go across the map. Maybe his draw in could have a bit of a shorter range or duration so it doesn't feel like it nullifies every escape option a Survivor has. There could also be tweaks to the damage he does and/or the range of his attacks, but I'm not certain if those really address the problem - especially against Level 0 Survivors at the start of a match.
The other is to the Super Transphere: it has to show up sooner and/or be more impactful. I don't know how breaking in favor of the Survivors it would be, but perhaps if it spawned in a third point equidistant from the Raider and the Survivors at the start of the match? Or some other sooner period, such as having it trigger on the first down Broly does if it's sooner than the time limit. A time limit that I feel like should be a little shorter if Broly's skills aren't tweaked along with this.
Another idea I have is that the person who has an active Super Transphere (let's call them the Counter for ease of identification) should have a sort of Ginyu-esque progression. Maybe not auto-evolve the moment Broly does to keep up with him, but perhaps the next Super Transphere does still spawn after a time and is only accessible to other Survivors if the Counter has been de-transformed. If the Counter is still transformed and grabs it, however, they evolve to the next stage (to their respective Super Saiyan Blue or Gogeta) along with getting a stacking boost to some combination of attack power, defense and/or movement speed. So it's in Broly's best interest to not just ignore them over attacking the other Survivors, or he at least will be penalized a bit by doing so. At the very least, he'll want to go after the Level 3 Counter to reset the bonus before they go to Level 4 since Gogeta is already pretty damaging.
With changes like these, or something else to rein in Broly, he might feel less insufferable to play against. Because, as it stands, it feels like you don't have many options beyond "just don't get caught until the last couple minutes of the match." Though, that said, I realized as I was writing this that I haven't really bothered trying to run any of the stuns against Broly - due to my aforementioned track record in landing them - so that might make dealing with him a little more tolerable. Will have to try it and see if it makes a difference (and added some bits in a bit slipshod to mention them amongst the rest of the tirade to at least put the option out there), but I still believe some of the above tweaks could be applied to make him generally less oppressive. If only because I had already written most of this out when this realization happened and didn't want to just trash everything I had suggested (either because I think they're generally good ideas and/or I don't want to feel like I've wasted my efforts more than I already have 😂).
... And maybe this is a more personal and cosmetic thing but... can we get some variations in Broly's lines? I know this is Dragon Ball - and it's Broly of all characters - but he just has what can be summarized as two dozen different flavors of screaming. And frankly, that's kind of boring at best and obnoxious at worst. At least make his Level 2 form be able to say things before descending into incoherent nonsense, a la Kid Buu.