*** Loki (Dark Reign) ***
[anchor=loki3]Loki (Dark Reign)[/anchor]
3 Star Rarity (Rare) Discussion link
At Max Level: HP: 5950 Tile damage: 12/11/13/79/61/70
Loki's trickery turns the enemy's tools against them. Transforms 1 enemy Strike tile into a friendly Protect tile and 1 enemy Protect tile into a friendly Strike tile.
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Changes the location of 14 colored tiles.
Level Upgrades
(PASSIVE) Loki is consumed by a cold rage as he moves to undermine his enemies. If the enemy team makes a match-4 of any color, Loki converts 2 basic tiles of that color into 4-turn Countdown tiles which steal 2 AP of a random color.
Older Abilities:
Loki’s trickery turns the enemy’s tools against them, converting enemy Protect tiles to friendly Strike tiles and enemy Strike tiles to friendly Protect tiles.
Level Upgrades
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Changes the location of 8 colored tiles.
Level Upgrades
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Up to 8 tiles change their color.
Level Upgrades
Edits by Nonce Equitaur 1 April 2014.
Original post:
"Loki’s nerf was overdone, period."
Before I begin, allow me to say that I have been using a decently leveled Loki with Level 20 in all skills, and even taking part in the recently concluded week-long tournament. It was with utter shock that the Loki nerf was made 12 hours prior to the end of the race, and it greatly impaired my ability to compete with similarly leveled opponents. While the patch timing was poor, the extent of the nerf made my jaw drop.
Loki had 2 skills: Transmogrify and Trickery. The latter is only useful in situations of enemy buff/debuff, and there are only so few heroes with strike/shield tiles placement. At high level PvP, almost no one uses Iron Man/Daken/Hawkeye, so Trickery is basically redundant. The one skill that defined Loki, and made him great, was Transmogrify. It gave a 50/50 chance of a combo chain, and probably 10% chance of a critical tile. The chance element was brilliant, much like gambling for high stakes. It could do anywhere from 0-1000+ damage, typically 400-500. In addition, it swaps out red and yellow tiles, making Loki a suitable counter for all the Thor spammage (more on that later). The whole Transmogrify idea of luck, chance and anti-Thor was the true essence of Loki.
And then Transmogrify was nerfed, possibly in the name of balance. In its place came Illusions, which can be best described as pathetic. It swaps random tiles for random tiles, when previously it guaranteed purples. Since the end of the tournament I’ve had hours to try this new skill out, and it was useless. 90% of the time it would do nothing, and the remainder 10% would see a single tile combination, two if you’re really lucky. If I wanted to form a tile combination, I’ll go ahead and do it directly. Granted it does not take a turn (all skills don’t, anyway), and there might be times when you don’t see many favorable tile combinations (rare, since the board always resets when all possibilities run out), Illusions is really a joke of a skill. The description says, ”You can't count on anything when Loki's around”, but I can always count on it… to do nothing significant. It could do nothing, or something absolutely amazing. As of current, it just does nothing for sure.
I understand the Devs meant for Loki to be some kind of a game-changer, pseudo utility/damage character, but this is just killing him. Illusions does no damage, and hardly changes the game to your favour. I wondered if this skill was tested before it was rolled out, because it really is next to turd in terms of worthiness. If Transmogrify was deemed overpowered, simply increase the tile cost (9 purple cost at level 20 would be decent), or reduce the number of tiles involved. Maybe 9/9 or 8/8 for red/yellow tiles exchange. To resort to this total gank is uncalled for. Even if Illusions cost less in terms of tiles to cast, I still find it ridiculously useless.
If the Devs are adamant on keeping Illusions, here’s what I suggest:
1. Revert back to purple tiles conversion, random choice of other tile colours, keep it at 16 tiles at level 20 (preferred as this maintains the wide damage range of the skill)
2. Add a base damage to it that scales with level
3. Add a mana drain to enemy equal to total tiles converted, random colours.
4. Add a 2 turn stun to the skill
Just one of them will do, this will maintain the utility aspect of Loki. Otherwise this skill is pretty much useless, especially for a character that only has 2 skills. Yes, only two skills, and neither particularly good. For a rare card, that's unacceptable.
As it is, there are two other cards with black/purple skillsets. Venom (common), Daken (uncommon), and it’s 3 if you add in Loki (rare). It only makes sense that Loki has to be superior to the other two. However, if you look at the statistics for card usage since the latest patch, you’ll find Venom above Loki. That’s because it has skills that, while not fantastic, is currently better than Illusions and Trickery. It does not make sense. Venom has a stun, a damage nuke, and that outright kill. Loki has none of them.
If you look at overpowered characters, Loki is hardly one of them, and did not deserve a nerf. Just look at Thor (uncommon) and Ragnarok (rare). It still befuddles me no end why Loki was nerfed, but these two remained unchanged. Look at the top 100 players; I would say almost 90% of them use either one or both. It’s easy to see why; they have ridiculous amounts of HP. Thor has 3 damage nukes, two of which easily surpass thousands of damage. Ragnarok has two skills that are brilliant, and chain almost endlessly. It also does a mega ton of damage, for extremely low cost. If you are looking for class balance, I’m sure these two are overpowered. Loki was designed as a pseudo utility/damage class with low HP, somewhat of a glass cannon. With that patch, he is now just glass.
Let's put things into perspective. Many high leveled characters have a 1500 damage nuke with 10-15 AP cost. Loki had Transmogrify, which did damage on a range of 0-1000+, and it could cost 9 AP. That sounds fair, doesn't it?
As I mentioned earlier on, I was in a tournament. It wasn’t easy against all the Thor spammage, but I managed to hang in there. After the nerf, I could hardly kill anything. I run a Wolverine X/Loki/Spidey build, which while not overpowering, synergized well. After Loki got nerfed, it fell apart. I could hardly kill anything until Wolverine charged up his enraged slash (15 AP! Not to mention I did not have this skill in the midst of the tournament), and most likely had characters die even battling lower leveled players. When taking on the top ten players, it was a nightmare.
But, I will have to admit one thing the patch did right. That was to remove the higher damage for blue tiles. Loki had no business doing higher damage with blue tiles, and that meant he charged forward unnecessarily many times, exposing himself to damage.
I’m not sure if my diatribe here helped change minds, but this is just the opinion of a player who has had pretty extensive experience with Loki. It’s an underused but fun class that quizzically got nerfed, which makes me question the development process behind this move. Transmogrify ought to have stayed; if it was deemed excessive, make changes to the cost or the number of tiles swapped. Having Illusions which swapped random for random tiles does essentially nothing except a board refresh. Granted this is just a preview version of the game, I am hoping you brilliant minds behind PQ1 and 2 consider my fair argument to restore Loki to his former glory, worthy of his rare card status. The whole idea of a game preview is to garner free testing feedback from the public, and this is exactly what I am doing.
3 Star Rarity (Rare) Discussion link
At Max Level: HP: 5950 Tile damage: 12/11/13/79/61/70
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Trickery - Black 11
Loki's trickery turns the enemy's tools against them. Transforms 1 enemy Strike tile into a friendly Protect tile and 1 enemy Protect tile into a friendly Strike tile.
-
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Loki steals 2 Strike and Protect tiles.
Level 3: Loki steals 3 Strike and Protect tiles.
Level 4: Loki steals 5 Strike and Protect tiles.
Level 5: Loki steals all Strike and Protect tiles.
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Changes the location of 14 colored tiles.
Level Upgrades
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Level 2: Changes the location of 18 colored tiles.
Level 3: Changes the location of 22 colored tiles.
Level 4: Changes the location of 26 colored tiles.
Level 5: Changes the location of 32 colored tiles.
(PASSIVE) Loki is consumed by a cold rage as he moves to undermine his enemies. If the enemy team makes a match-4 of any color, Loki converts 2 basic tiles of that color into 4-turn Countdown tiles which steal 2 AP of a random color.
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Level Upgrades
Level 2: Countdown tiles last 3 turns.
Level 3: Loki creates 3 Countdown tiles.
Level 4: Countdown tiles last 2 turns.
Level 5: Loki creates 4 Countdown tiles.
Older Abilities:
Loki’s trickery turns the enemy’s tools against them, converting enemy Protect tiles to friendly Strike tiles and enemy Strike tiles to friendly Protect tiles.
Level Upgrades
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Level 2: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 3: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 4: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 5: Costs 1 AP less.
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Changes the location of 8 colored tiles.
Level Upgrades
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Level 2: Changes the location of 9 colored tiles.
Level 3: Changes the location of 10 colored tiles.
Level 4: Changes the location of 12 colored tiles.
Level 5: Changes the location of 16 colored tiles.
You can’t count on anything when Loki’s around. Up to 8 tiles change their color.
Level Upgrades
-
Level 2: 9 tiles change color.
Level 3: 10 tiles change color.
Level 4: 12 tiles change color.
Level 5: 16 tiles change color.
Edits by Nonce Equitaur 1 April 2014.
Original post:
"Loki’s nerf was overdone, period."
Before I begin, allow me to say that I have been using a decently leveled Loki with Level 20 in all skills, and even taking part in the recently concluded week-long tournament. It was with utter shock that the Loki nerf was made 12 hours prior to the end of the race, and it greatly impaired my ability to compete with similarly leveled opponents. While the patch timing was poor, the extent of the nerf made my jaw drop.
Loki had 2 skills: Transmogrify and Trickery. The latter is only useful in situations of enemy buff/debuff, and there are only so few heroes with strike/shield tiles placement. At high level PvP, almost no one uses Iron Man/Daken/Hawkeye, so Trickery is basically redundant. The one skill that defined Loki, and made him great, was Transmogrify. It gave a 50/50 chance of a combo chain, and probably 10% chance of a critical tile. The chance element was brilliant, much like gambling for high stakes. It could do anywhere from 0-1000+ damage, typically 400-500. In addition, it swaps out red and yellow tiles, making Loki a suitable counter for all the Thor spammage (more on that later). The whole Transmogrify idea of luck, chance and anti-Thor was the true essence of Loki.
And then Transmogrify was nerfed, possibly in the name of balance. In its place came Illusions, which can be best described as pathetic. It swaps random tiles for random tiles, when previously it guaranteed purples. Since the end of the tournament I’ve had hours to try this new skill out, and it was useless. 90% of the time it would do nothing, and the remainder 10% would see a single tile combination, two if you’re really lucky. If I wanted to form a tile combination, I’ll go ahead and do it directly. Granted it does not take a turn (all skills don’t, anyway), and there might be times when you don’t see many favorable tile combinations (rare, since the board always resets when all possibilities run out), Illusions is really a joke of a skill. The description says, ”You can't count on anything when Loki's around”, but I can always count on it… to do nothing significant. It could do nothing, or something absolutely amazing. As of current, it just does nothing for sure.
I understand the Devs meant for Loki to be some kind of a game-changer, pseudo utility/damage character, but this is just killing him. Illusions does no damage, and hardly changes the game to your favour. I wondered if this skill was tested before it was rolled out, because it really is next to turd in terms of worthiness. If Transmogrify was deemed overpowered, simply increase the tile cost (9 purple cost at level 20 would be decent), or reduce the number of tiles involved. Maybe 9/9 or 8/8 for red/yellow tiles exchange. To resort to this total gank is uncalled for. Even if Illusions cost less in terms of tiles to cast, I still find it ridiculously useless.
If the Devs are adamant on keeping Illusions, here’s what I suggest:
1. Revert back to purple tiles conversion, random choice of other tile colours, keep it at 16 tiles at level 20 (preferred as this maintains the wide damage range of the skill)
2. Add a base damage to it that scales with level
3. Add a mana drain to enemy equal to total tiles converted, random colours.
4. Add a 2 turn stun to the skill
Just one of them will do, this will maintain the utility aspect of Loki. Otherwise this skill is pretty much useless, especially for a character that only has 2 skills. Yes, only two skills, and neither particularly good. For a rare card, that's unacceptable.
As it is, there are two other cards with black/purple skillsets. Venom (common), Daken (uncommon), and it’s 3 if you add in Loki (rare). It only makes sense that Loki has to be superior to the other two. However, if you look at the statistics for card usage since the latest patch, you’ll find Venom above Loki. That’s because it has skills that, while not fantastic, is currently better than Illusions and Trickery. It does not make sense. Venom has a stun, a damage nuke, and that outright kill. Loki has none of them.
If you look at overpowered characters, Loki is hardly one of them, and did not deserve a nerf. Just look at Thor (uncommon) and Ragnarok (rare). It still befuddles me no end why Loki was nerfed, but these two remained unchanged. Look at the top 100 players; I would say almost 90% of them use either one or both. It’s easy to see why; they have ridiculous amounts of HP. Thor has 3 damage nukes, two of which easily surpass thousands of damage. Ragnarok has two skills that are brilliant, and chain almost endlessly. It also does a mega ton of damage, for extremely low cost. If you are looking for class balance, I’m sure these two are overpowered. Loki was designed as a pseudo utility/damage class with low HP, somewhat of a glass cannon. With that patch, he is now just glass.
Let's put things into perspective. Many high leveled characters have a 1500 damage nuke with 10-15 AP cost. Loki had Transmogrify, which did damage on a range of 0-1000+, and it could cost 9 AP. That sounds fair, doesn't it?
As I mentioned earlier on, I was in a tournament. It wasn’t easy against all the Thor spammage, but I managed to hang in there. After the nerf, I could hardly kill anything. I run a Wolverine X/Loki/Spidey build, which while not overpowering, synergized well. After Loki got nerfed, it fell apart. I could hardly kill anything until Wolverine charged up his enraged slash (15 AP! Not to mention I did not have this skill in the midst of the tournament), and most likely had characters die even battling lower leveled players. When taking on the top ten players, it was a nightmare.
But, I will have to admit one thing the patch did right. That was to remove the higher damage for blue tiles. Loki had no business doing higher damage with blue tiles, and that meant he charged forward unnecessarily many times, exposing himself to damage.
I’m not sure if my diatribe here helped change minds, but this is just the opinion of a player who has had pretty extensive experience with Loki. It’s an underused but fun class that quizzically got nerfed, which makes me question the development process behind this move. Transmogrify ought to have stayed; if it was deemed excessive, make changes to the cost or the number of tiles swapped. Having Illusions which swapped random for random tiles does essentially nothing except a board refresh. Granted this is just a preview version of the game, I am hoping you brilliant minds behind PQ1 and 2 consider my fair argument to restore Loki to his former glory, worthy of his rare card status. The whole idea of a game preview is to garner free testing feedback from the public, and this is exactly what I am doing.
Failed to load the poll.
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Comments
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Are we listening to people like this? Like I said. The game has promise. Ignore the passionate and the title will plunge into obscurity as something that could have truly been special.0
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Bombul said it much better than I.0
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I noticed the latest patch notes did not mention the Loki nerf. I'm hoping the Devs are reconsidering it.
This is such a good PQ game, but this undeserved change really killed any joy I had in playing. Loki was the only character I liked that wasn't all about "stock up 15 AP, spam 1500 damage nuke". I wish I could have fun using Loki again; you can tell how much I know about the character from the post above. In the past few days I've played this game so much, I'm certain I know each and every skill of all characters, and how they interact in actual high level gameplay. That mad tussling for the top 5 tournament spots taught me everything I needed to know; I had literally fought them all
Sincerely hope it can be addressed
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Bombul, thank you very much for your well thought out post! Our lead designer (as well as many others here at Demiurge) here have read it and are working on a response which we hope to have out shortly. Thanks again for your time and we hope you'll stick with us as we try to get balance right.0
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Hi Chris,
Thanks for the prompt response to my thread. I do appreciate the development team taking a serious view of my thoughts; this game has a lot of potential, not to mention the talent behind its development.
I'm really holding out further upgrades to my Loki at this moment. I will await the response with bated breath
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Loki seems to have been overpowered and now overnerfed.
It was my first 3* with his pink skill. Did use it pve for last resort with pesky countdown tiles.
My suggestion.
Add skill.
Green 12 AP (or so) mirror image.
Loki uses his powers to make an illusion of himself. Enemy's might be fooled and hit the fake one. Generates a defence countdown tile. When the tile is on the board there's a 30% change loki does not take the damage. Counted by each sepate damage dealt, even from abilities.
Lvl 1 30% 2 round countdown
Lvl 2 AP -1
Lvl 3 40% 3 round
Lvl 4 AP - 1
Lvl 5 50% 4 round
And. It is a suggestion...as ll comments welcome. I wonder if it is not too strong.0 -
I like it though it wouldn't be as much use when you're using him in defense in PvP since if the AI used his power, all you'd have to do is switch which character you were attacking until the timer counted down and then go back to pounding on Loki (assuming Loki wasn't the last character left). Still I think it would be fun.
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I agree with is now one of the weakest if not the weakest hero. But I do not see him as the tank and this would do this, i think he should be more of a support. Maybe, destroying two intersecting lines of gems produces ap but dont do damage, like storm but u can decide where u strike.0
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Your right. He shud not become a tank. Will think something else based on his magick and fooling ppl....0
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I know he was insanely powerful before his nerf, but he's currently about as useful as a juggernaught without the headbutt skill. Illusion is an okay skill, but maybe it could add a count down tile that allows him to jump to the back of the pack (when he is attacked) while it's on the board. That would make him okay on defense. Trickery is largely useless and expensive. It should have some secondary function. If there are no special tiles, stuns the opposing team for 2 turns. And if he's going to be useful, he should have some kind of a passive ap gaining skill like the hood. It could gain black (not to many moves use black, so it wouldn't be insane like classic storm. The skill could be> whenever loki jumps to the back of the pack (because of that illusion countdown) gain 3 black ap.0
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i wonder what loki like before nerfed? did he got some massive damage skill or ap gain skill0
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His black skill turned 20 tiles to purple and only cost 10. Basically he did an insane amount of damage and cascaded a ton.0
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i can see why that was changed but he's more useless than ** chars at this point. i've only played with him in his current nerfed state and underwhelmed to say the least. perhaps he can get a 3rd skill. maybe one of something like this:
mind tricks: blue, cost 8
rank 1 consume all blue tiles dealing normal dmg per tile but no ap and stun front enemy for x + 1 turns, where x = # tiles consumed / 3
rank 2 -1 AP
rank 3 x + 2 turns
rank 4 -1AP
rank 5 additionaly stuns rest of team for # tiles consumed / 9
stolen life: green, cost 10
rank 1 = choose 3 basic tiles to turn to black
rank 2 = +1 tile
rank 3 = -1 AP
rank 4 = can change any tile
rank 5 = +1 tile
stunning insight: yellow, passive
rank 1 = any attempts to stun your team fail if there are at least 7 yellow tiles on the board
rank 2 = at least 6 yellow tiles on the board
rank 3 = at least 5 yellow tiles on the board
rank 4 = at least 4 yellow tiles on the board
rank 5 = the stun is rebounded and stuns the enemy instead of failing0 -
Shamusyeah wrote:His black skill turned 20 tiles to purple and only cost 10. Basically he did an insane amount of damage and cascaded a ton.
jesus christ0 -
Shamusyeah wrote:His black skill turned 20 tiles to purple and only cost 10. Basically he did an insane amount of damage and cascaded a ton.
A simple numbers tweak would have fixed that just fine. **** is wrong with these devs.0 -
woaaaaahhhh that should be banned even for 5 star[ if there is]Shamusyeah wrote:His black skill turned 20 tiles to purple and only cost 10. Basically he did an insane amount of damage and cascaded a ton.
20 tiles change is definitely god killer0 -
Nahh, black skill is only turn red and yellow tile to purple not that god like !! He is just like Rag but rag is better at 115 2 ap 620 x 10 red ap 3100 damage and turn random tile to green. So Loki without nerf is alright, dont make sure a big deal. Loki should be baxk to his original form is better.0
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(moved stats to earlier post)
Original post follows:I've been playing around with him for a while now and i have to say that Loki is a VERY good situational support character. Case in point when you find yourself against those uber Dakens and find yourself afraid of green tiles because of those pesky strike tiles he creates. I believe what will make or break him in the long runt though will be if/when he finally gets a third skill and if that skill is decent. What do you guys think?0 -
I like Loki too, but he desperately needs a third skill. Maybe a support skill like AP collection, some kind of tile smashing + light damage or a passive that adds certain colors to a board when they run low.0
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Maybe we'll get a siege of asgard event and he'll pick up norn stones for a third skill.0
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