2* teams - how to truly make diversity (ideas; long post)

Unknown

This topic is regarding recent changes and my ideas, I'm not sure if it fits general or Char discussion better, since it kinda deals with both so I'm leaving that to mods.

0. Intro
As we all know, recent changes made quite a storm on forum. Overwhelming majority, including me, thinks that this change have one and only one goal - selling Healthpacks, and other reasons were brought to try to mask it. However, in this thread I'm going assume that wasn't the case, and that they really wanted to make game better. This change didn't make anything to 1* rosters and very little to developed 3* rosters, mostly hitting 2* players and those beginning to move up into 3s. That's why I'm going to focus on this group.

1. Dealing with damage
In MPQ, attacking is simple. Match tiles for small damage, launch attack for big damage. A bit of strike tiles to boost first, a bit of AP steal/gain to boost second.
Defending from harm is bit more complicated. Most basic one is denying proper AP from enemy team and killing them before they have chance to launch their strikes. More advanced are various skills you can launch. As a prevention from damage you have: Protect tiles, AP steal/burn, stunning, clearing Cooldown Tiles and healing.

Protect strikes work mostly against basic match damage. AP steal/burn works against all types of special attacks. Stunning mainly delays CD timers, but can grant free turns in you stun everyone. Healing works against... everything. Easy to see it's too good right? But... what a heal will do, when Tommy gun is about to activate with tons of strike tiles? A 200 Ares is about to Sunder you, you search for AP drain or stun. In more balanced matches like in PvP, you really want that 1100 heal, but only Jugg would try and eat 50hp Hot Dog over going for more Red/Green. Healing is the most versatile of course. In my opinion, it's fine, and only require number tweak rather than adding very confusing true and fake healing.

To prevent prologue healing, all you need to do is to not let characters come out with more health that they went into battle. All healing abilities, including regeneration stuff to make it simple, work only on fresh wounds, aka damage you took from this battle only. After that all we need to do is change amount of healing so that it will be on par with other defensive abilities, rather than trumping everything OR being pretty much worthless, which is how the balance swing now. Then, work up on other characters and their defensive skills, so that bringing them will be more worthwhile than just bringing more straight damage/health.


2. Problems with 2* diversity

The problems are as follow:
- Prologue healing is tedious mechanic players are forced into if they want to compete. That seem to be main reason of changes, but with how deep and complicated they are (real? healing), it's obvious it targets more than that.
- Extremely low diversity. Only viable teams are Ares/OBW, Thor/OBW and Storm/Mag. First two being same thing really, with last being so fragile the top 2 teams just eat them up, being high-manual combo that AI can't play doesn't help either.
- OBW too stronk. All of her abilities offer phenomenal support to any tank, she is only healer and ap stealer, and frankly, if she had a lazy version, she would probably be best character in game (or at least in top 3).

Does the 'feature' solve those problem? Just tutorial healing - yeah obviously. Others - absolutely not. That is main reason why people think it's just cash grab. 2* still regard OBW+Ares/Thor as strongest team. In fact, it's even stronger on defense. When fighting in mirror, 6 green Onslaugh could be mend on spot, right now it's even more scarier. The only thing this change made is, you guessed it, having to use more Healthpacks. In theory, OBW+Ares/Thor now have to use same amount as other teams, but it hardly matters when you still see them over and over.

That's why I think to truly break 'the only team' more changes must be brought into play. The easiest of course is to nerf OBW 'to the ground baby'. Fishnet Yelena would surely make meta change, with one but. From remaining partnerns for Ares/Thor, them two would make best new team. Yes, the remaining support options are so bad that I think having only half colours covered would still make them strongest than trying to fill rainbow. So maybe instead of going 'hammer the top', a 'work on a bottom' would work better?

3. Overview of characters

There is total of 12 2* characters in game. I'm going a little easy on myself and only list 11. Because Bagman is, well... Bagman. At this point, I'm sure he is just a joke character. Someone who is there just so you can say 'at least he/she is better that Bagman'. Fixing someone who intentionally is made bad, or worse, using it, just won't work. I'm also not listing not fully covered 3*. Those aren't really usuable until you get ~9+ of their covers, so they are simply not possible for player until he is very, very close to transitioning.
So we have Ares, Thor, Black Widow, Storm, Magneto, Bullseye, Hawkeye, Daken, Wolvie, Moonstone and Captain America. In terms of ability colours:
Red - 7 chars, 7 active
Yellow - 5 chars, 3 active
Green - 6 chars, 4 active
Blue - 5 chars, 5 active
Purple - 5 chars, 3 active
Black - 4 chars, 2 active
Doesn't look terrible right? Apart from Black being underrepresented. Problem comes with how those skills are balanced. OBW have only good active Purple, other is used to get Blue or is just bad on Bagstone. Blue have only 2 good users, again OBW or Storm. Black is so terrible that neither of it skills is worth collecting AP for, but again OBW passive is best and in reality covers much more than Black. Then, RYG combo is usually found on one char that have actives for those skills. Red is strangly average apart from devastating Wolvie, but Yellow and Green are true killers on both Ares and Thor.
Can you see pattern? The love triangle of OBW flirting with Ares and Thor comes from not having alternatives. They match each other perfectly, when others struggle to make rainbow, and when they cover most colours, those abilities tends to be bad anyway.

At this point we can assume D3 don't want to add new characters to 2*, as they won't bring as much profit as another 3 or 4*. Rebalancing existing characters shouldn't be that off the charts though, right?

4. How to turn Bagpeople into playable Heroes and Villains

Unless otherwise stated, the abilities I would propose are at 5 cover power and max level. A viable team is something I consider when pair covers 5 colours and have decent skills on their own or good synergy between them.


Thor, Ares and Wolvie -The RGY people
Red Green Yellow tanks. No point in reinventing wheel, most of possible new combinations will consist of such tank and a support. Both Thor and Ares are fine, first providing self synergy with 1-2 punch with big aoe, other being single target spiker. Wolvie however is way behind them. Just think, OBW double dips on strike tiles he can generate, yet nobody runs that pair ever over Thor/Ares. His Yellow either needs to heal him to 100% at 5, or he needs base health on level of Thor and Ares. Currently, he is just too way squishy if you actually want to use his power. Healing can be even tweaked lower, but the level at which he can began restoring health is suicidal at the moment.

Storm
I have no idea what to do with this lady to be honest. She is fine, it's just that only good match for her is Magneto. Her tendency to destroy board make it anti-synergy with Bullseye or Daken. Just let her be happily married with mr 'Neto?

Moonstone
Problem: all skills are weak, and 2 of them are random and situational. Unusual colours make her hard to pair.
The 'I'm not sure' lady. Health bordering tank level. Black and Purple support skills. Wanting parter with Yellow, Green or Blue, only Storm fits description. Magneto however is much better Storm partner due to synergy, leaving her at best as sidekick to Thor/Ares for extra match damage, as her skills are simply not worth bothering.
Purple - the random factor completely kills the skill. More often than not, with more than one viable target, it does absolutely nothing. Anti-special tile skill that is less useful when such tiles exist is just stupid. Possible change - choose a tile, with more colours coming with more covers, and destroy (/collapse) it. Including cooldown tiles. Always deal 500 damage, deal double that if choosen tile is a basic one.
Black - talk about overpriced. At 12 AP it seems much more workable, with possible 3 turn stun instead of 2. Random here actually feels fine, you can use Purple to lower odds of getting one you want.
Red - Her nuke have one big problem. First, you need to get 11 AP to cast it, that's 4 matches. Then, you need to wait for board to refill to deal decent damage. There needs to be 12 tiles for this attack to match Wolvie. While it probably shouldn't deal so much, it still is bit too expensive. At 9 AP it would make it decent. Second, more apparent problem is overuse of Red. Instead of Red, make her Yellow since 2* generally lack that spender (apart from Thor/Ares).
With her as Yellow/Purple/Black with improved skills, she can team up with Wolvie, Hawkeye, Cpt. America and Storm.

Daken
Problem: Only 2 skills. Low level makes them weaker than they should be.
His third colour is Green. However, a Blue power would give much more options. It would also make it similar to Laken. Possible power: 9 blue - consumes all friendly strike tiles to heal team for 300 base and additional 50 per strike tile consumed.
With his strike tiles being better at higher level as well as having team healing ability, he would be placed where OBW was, with Thor, Ares or Wolvie, with possible Cpt America for full rainbow for basic matches.

Bullseye
Problem: Same as Daken + weak Black.
Change his Green to Blue. Add Blue skill: 7 blue, create 2 turn CD tile that steals 4 AP of every colour. Black is way overpriced. At 12 it would make it castable, double crit tiles hurt but not really worse than getting hit by Thunder Strike which more often than not finish match. At 24 you could actually use the ultra-damage gimmick, as rare as it might be.
Again with higher level, better skills and AP drain, he can be considered viable sidekick to your RGY. Team with Cpt for turtle-team.

Captain America
Problem: Too damn slow.
His Yellow is absurd. It cost 19 to launch PROTECT tiles. Tiles that you want to get asap to prevent damage taken. At that cost, you tend to end matches. At 8 yellow and 2 tiles, it keeps same strength, yet lets you use it early to actually block damage. His Red deals laughtable damage. This part was fixed in lazy America, but left in 2* one. It needs to deal at minimum double damage, with 2 turn timer return. Blue is fine.
After changes, he fits with Moonstone, OBW, Daken and Bullseye.

Magneto
Magneto suffers from bad colours palette. He makes a great Blue battery, but lacks good partner apart from obvious Storm. His skills are fine, but changing his Red into Black would open up few possibilities. He would still pair with Storm just as well, but also work with Hawkeye (farming blue for him) as well as make him possible support for RGY. And finally will give real decent Black skill to 2* while taking away from overused Red.

Hawkeye
Guy who is going to be buffed, for realz, at one point. It's been like 6 month now reading forum? With so much brainstorming I'm sure they know how to improve him. Me, I would make his Red and Blue cost 9 and his Blue do 2k + 1k aoe (like Thor). The other reason why he is not played is lack of good partner, but after changes, I think Moonstone would work beautifully as his tank. Black Magneto would have same synergy as with Storm too. Finally, Ares or Thor could lend their health and Yellow+Green for brute force team.

Black Widow
Finally our femme fatalle. She dominates support, having healing, extra damage on matches and TWO ap stealing skills. Still as strong if not better on defense. Assumming we get rid of fake healing, how would be she balanced to be stil good yet no overused like she still is now?
Black - two problems with this skills I have is that it acts as AP steal, which she already has, and that it turns into useless once you get any char that can tank for her. Solution? Skill activates no matter who in team makes matches. Skill now drains enemy AP instead of stealing it (so enemy looses 1 of said colour but OBW team don't gain it). Also fixes a problem where she can Recon on second Purple match if enemy team had any Purple.
Purple - 6 base cost. Together with Black change, makes sure she require 3 matches to make Recon.
Blue - The Problem, given the changes that happened. Like I said before, in my opinion it's only matter of numbers. A straight 50% cut on her healing would make it right. At 550hp per heal, it should be no longer possible to just tank and outheal everything, but it should be comparable, if bit weaker, against normal matches to having Protect Tiles for few turns. It won't outheal a skill landing, but it will certainly soften it a little better than Protect Strikes. No longer halves at 5 Blue if CDs are present, it would be overkill.
This should make her on par with new Daken and Bullseye.

5. Summary
Viable teams now:
Obw/Ares, Obw/Thor, Storm/Magneto = 3
Possible viable teams after changes:
Obw + RGY, Bullseye + RGY, Daken + RGY, Magneto + RGY, Storm+Magneto, Moonstone+Hawkeye/Wolvie, Hawkeye+Storm/Magneto, Cap+Bullseye/Obw/Daken/Magneto = 21
Notice trend? You have 4 man support team - OBW, Bullseye, Daken and Magneto. And 4 tanks - Thor, Ares, Wolvie and Cap. By making sure their strenght is similar, by having this 8 leveled up chars, you can field 4 diffrent viable teams at once. Something that wasn't able before when only working teammate to beefy guys was simple OBW. Then you have Moonstone finally being usable with Hawkeye, or as actualy working support for Wolvie. Magneto doing his blue engine for Hawkeye for full aoe team. You now have actually options of fielding more teams, and having more options will reward you with longer playtime, and therefore, possible higher ranking.

So yeah. Obviously theese are only my ideas. I kinda have more time, with Healthpacks recharging and all...

Unknown

Seconded - I don't have anything to add. This is damned near perfect.

Ideal world would add a couple of 2* characters too, when I started there were about equal numbers of 2 and 3*, now it is 2 to 1. But as someone else said, no money in adding 2* characters.

GrumpySmurf1002

Some strong suggestions, my quibble would be that the consistent suggestion is to make all the non RGY guys except Moonstone and Hawkeye into Purple-Blue-Black guys. That's not really helping. Sure it's giving rainbow availability across pairs, but there's no decision points as to how to manage your AP. Plus, do you really want your support guys tanking all their colors?

I would make Daken's 3rd yellow. LDaken's 3rd AP color (blue) is also what controls his heat/heal. Regular Daken should do the same. You have to sacrifice pulling yellow off the board to charge the skill.
Bullseye I would give a yellow 3rd power with some kind of nominal damage + board shape up ability, like taking out the diagonals (no AP generation). That makes the Y/Bk/P combo you gave to Moonstone.
Magneto and Moonstone, as far as colors go, are fine as is. Their red are bigger nukes than Ares/Thor's red, so there's some synergy there already if you so chose.

One other change, if you're screwing with colors anyway - make Sunder blue instead of yellow. Break up the YGR monopoly and give Magneto another outlet besides cStorm. (not to mention now the uber pair of Ares/OBW has a big decision point with the blue AP.)

Unknown

I like the general concept of your post... very nicely thought out .

On the other hand though I don't think tinkering so much with heroes power colours is called for, needs to be some choices in the game after all and part of the (alleged) balance in the game is certain types of abilities being tied to certain colours. If I was going to have a go at altering heroes I think i'd go for something like this....

OBW, Ares, Thor, MMN, Storm are all fine IMO, no changes needed (except I would drop the timer on MMN's blue at 5 colours by 1). Addressing OBW in particular I think the hero change essentially balances her (still hate the healing change!). She has 2 forms of AP steal, a heal which at least helps you come out a bit less beaten up but you have to question if you can START a PvP vs a mirror team part dead safely and finally she can double dip on strike tiles from A.Wolvie and Daken (although TBH those pairings are a bit meh).

Moonstone
Not a terrible hero TBH just lags behind Ares and Thor. Her red is plain good, her purple is ok-ish BUT her black is ****. I would probably have her purple do 1/2 damage on moving a special tile and reduce the cost of her black to 12AP. Maybe also let you select the tile to move but that might be a bit much...

Daken
Needs a third colour abiltiy and IMO it should just be a direct copy of Lazy Daken's but on Yellow to match his regen OR (preferably) change his regen to be based off blue and add chemical reaction in as a blue ability. Just being able to get him to 85 so he tanks colours better would be a nice start.

Bullseye
Needs a third ability and his black is pretty pricey considering you are NEVER getting that bonus damage. With C.Hawkeye's purple costing 7 I would put Bullseye's black at 13 or 14 (since you could argue it's less likely you'll find enough good crit spots to get double the value of placing a single crit at half the price). As for a third ability I would make it green (that's his 3rd colour) and some form of damage or non-AP generating tile destruction. My personal choice would be a Yelena style convert enemy special tiles to crit tiles ability to synergise a bit with his black and offer some control.

Captain America
Simple really... make him a 2* version of Lazy Cap. Fix his red damage to not be **** and give a protect tile on CD completion for his blue.

Hawkeye
Not as bad as all that TBH with his abilities doing decent damage, albeit on CD timers. I think either allowing you to place the CD tiles OR have avoid give a protect tile, up to 3 total when triggered. Something around 30-40 at max level would do the trick I reckon.

I find the differences between "good" and "bad" heroes to often be a bit smaller than we'd think (similarly going from overpowered to garbage doesn't take a massive change.. just ask poor spidey (and Loki and Rag).

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Some strong suggestions, my quibble would be that the consistent suggestion is to make all the non RGY guys except Moonstone and Hawkeye into Purple-Blue-Black guys. That's not really helping. Sure it's giving rainbow availability across pairs, but there's no decision points as to how to manage your AP. Plus, do you really want your support guys tanking all their colors?

I do agree to some point that this is 'lazy' qualification, but I think it's for best given very limited roster 2s have, and leave nuanced combos for 3s. Being able to switch one support to other, while keeping same tank, is quite a boon. And I'm not using Laken so I guess I did quite err there. For tanking on weak chars, yeah, that might hurt. Then again, OBW heal, Bulls dont need to match purple (and Protect makes him immune to match damage so just play around skills), Daken WANTS to tank and Magneto have quite high health. And imo having more options with AP adds to strategy. Short of cascade, you need to think which color you want now and what color you want to deny from whole spectrum now, rather than 'don't let ares-obw get yellow, green and purple, forget rest'.

Moonstone is one that I really think Yellow change would go long way. First, I don't think usual tank guys need her, second is that this type of pairing isn't that good (although better purple/black would help a lot) as there is little point of adding 'slightly' better Red, third is that we lack Yellow nukes apart from 2 most overused chars, and most importantly, once we get Hawkeye to be playable, she would finally put her fatty health for good use. Otherwise, finding team with Hawkeye would be hard. Thor/Ares could work, but do you pair Magneto with them? Because they have similar roles of having Red/Blue nukes. Hawk/Bulls would be the wimpiest team ever.

And yeah, it's just rough ideas. Obviously lack in more than few points

Kolence

Very nice ideas, both from OP and others. I hope some of them are used in some way when new lazy versions of these characters are made. As for 2* teams and on topic, besides modern Hawkeye buff which has already been promised, I doubt we'll see much change if any. I'd love it if I'm proved wrong though.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

I like the general concept of your post... very nicely thought out .

Daken
Bullseye
Captain America
Simple really... make him a 2* version of Lazy Cap. Fix his red damage to not be **** and give a protect tile on CD completion for his blue.

Direct copying Laken colours into Daken would be best, although blue having some protect or heal would work better when pairing imo than just having 'another' nuke tank chars hardly need. I'm still trying to compare what Hero needs to have to choose him over making second OBW. Bullseye keeping Green would make him amazing turtle with Cpt. But for 3* America, does he get used often there, compared to say, 3* Thor? 19 point Yellow just sound ridiculous and work against it's very role - make Protect tiles to soften as many blows as possible.

Unknown

3* cap gets SOME use in PvP but not tons. He is very good in PvE though which has to be some kind of consideration . Downscaling him to 2* would be massively better than the current 2* cap though. Ignore the yellow (everyone else does ) and just look at red and blue....

His blue does everything 2*'s does (stun, overwrite, AP return) BUT also makes a protect tile... a very good protect tile. It is slightly better than an individual protect tile from his yellow, so at 85 a 2* cap would make a tile of just over 150 strength from his blue if the CD completes.

His red does actual damage.... (along with overwrite and AP return). If you look at lazy Thor, for example, his red and green do about 1.8 times the damage at max level of a 2* Thor at max level. (his yellow does a lot more than 1.8x but makes less green tiles). Lazy Cap's red, on the other hand, does 5.6 times the damage at max level of 2* Cap's max level red which is ridiculous (and he's still not seeing massive play suggesting he is close to balanced and 2* cap is terrible.)

If you scale 2* Cap's red to be 1/1.8th of 3* Cap's red then it should do 1910 damage which is not unreasonable and would make him a MUCH more viable hero. As it stands his red is a TOTAL joke...