POLL: Overpriced powers

Unknown

Lyrian wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

With the longer games, and Hulk's increased health, and the tendancy to save Hulk for last, his Smash is quite dangerous, doing up to 5000+ damage. I got a loss in PvP due to it just today. Smash might not see much use on offence, but it gets used effectively on defense. (( By the way -- does anyone have a maxed Hulk with 5 red covers?))

Actually, I have Hulk at 5 Red. Of course, I read this post the morning after I just dumped about 150k into Sentry/She-Hulk. I need about 40k more to max out Hulk, but I should have that data for you by the Lightning Rounds this week, if no one else comes forward with it first.

Personally, I think Hulk's Smash is bugged and not calculating damage properly. It is consuming 14 Red and up to 10 Green **before** checking how much Green the player has to calculate bonus damage. This means players need to consume 24 AP to even begin to achieve Green bonus damage on Smash. A clarification from the devs would be appreciated whether this is working as intended.

Are you saying it's consuming 10green but not damaging for 10green? Or that it takes up to 10green but only does damage if you had a full 10green? As in it takes 5 but uses 0, an all or nothing prospect?

Anyway I don't think this power is overly expensive for the Hulk. If you look at the power on it's own it's very costly, but seems balanced otherwise. The not awesome power keeps hulk from becoming Thor/Ares in the 2* world. Why would you use anything else? Yes we'll give him a 3rd power on top of his ultra fast healing and massive HP/tankiness. No you will not enjoy it as much as the rest.

IM40 on the other hand just rusts on my roster. His best most playable feature isn't so awesome as to justify the worse qualities of the rest of him. He is a turd and needs to be on the to be tweaked list.

Caps yellow is just another expensive power. It may not be the end all and be all power, but I'd like to see it replaced with a quick, slightly less powerful power. Maybe half the price to make 1 chosen yellow protect tile, 2 at L5 or half the price for same effect but randomly placed.

Unknown

Hulk's Smash costs 14 red and 10 green. Any green left after that 10 is consumed deals extra damage. So if it does 2500 base damage and 100 damage per green (it's more, but I like easy numbers) and you have 15 green when you use it, it does 2500+500, 3000 total. It really is a lot, especially considering how much more other characters can do with those 2 colours.

It should deal bonus damage for each green consumed, to a max of 10 or 15, with the base damage increased. But it takes roughly a month for Demuirge to buff or nerf a character, and Hulk is probably near the bottom of the list of characters needing a buff.

Unknown

RockMonster wrote:

Hulk's Smash costs 14 red and 10 green. Any green left after that 10 is consumed deals extra damage. So if it does 2500 base damage and 100 damage per green (it's more, but I like easy numbers) and you have 15 green when you use it, it does 2500+500, 3000 total. It really is a lot, especially considering how much more other characters can do with those 2 colours.

It should deal bonus damage for each green consumed, to a max of 10 or 15, with the base damage increased. But it takes roughly a month for Demuirge to buff or nerf a character, and Hulk is probably near the bottom of the list of characters needing a buff.

Why can't all abilities be that simple. Damn.

Still think hulk is mostly balanced but I do agree about doing damage for each consumed green. Even if it's a backup red power its still an option. Guranteed 2492 damage at 14 red is better then some. Worse you loose 9 green (1 shy of his green power) but that comes with timing on any team. If his red were as good as others who wouldn't use hulk?

dr tinykittylove

Darkwing Duck wrote:

Lyrian wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

With the longer games, and Hulk's increased health, and the tendancy to save Hulk for last, his Smash is quite dangerous, doing up to 5000+ damage. I got a loss in PvP due to it just today. Smash might not see much use on offence, but it gets used effectively on defense. (( By the way -- does anyone have a maxed Hulk with 5 red covers?))

IM40 on the other hand just rusts on my roster. His best most playable feature isn't so awesome as to justify the worse qualities of the rest of him. He is a turd and needs to be on the to be tweaked list.

Caps yellow is just another expensive power. It may not be the end all and be all power, but I'd like to see it replaced with a quick, slightly less powerful power. Maybe half the price to make 1 chosen yellow protect tile, 2 at L5 or half the price for same effect but randomly placed.

Rockmonster is right about how Smash works. First 10 greens are flushed down the ****. I've never actually used Hulk's red in a match apart from one trial run - have better things to spend the green on, including Clap. Hulk is really just a time sink you have to whittle down gently until you can one-shot him. I've had fun pairing him with my 2* Thor, though - he tanks for Thor and Thor calls storms on thr heads of the poor saps facing them. My record so far is 3 storms in one match.

Periodically I put Pun and IM40 together (basically when my 2* crew are all down for the count). Pun has the cheap powers to spam while lM40 charges his batteries for the knockout. They're not really effective, but it gives me a sense of achievement using his impractical attacks to win.

Expensive powers in general really are spectacularly useless on defense, though. Someone with level 140 GSBW/IM40 and too many points to spare attacked me twice in pvp earlier for a total of something like 6 points? I retaled both times taking over 30 points off them each time. Using my 2* Thor/OBW. The only times I ever see anything on this list get used against me is when I get a deeply unfavourable board or the AI gets a magical cascade of tinykitty doom.

atomzed

It's incorrect to say that Hulk smash uses 14 red and 10 green. It uses 14 red and up to 10 green.

It's an important distinction as you can be using it as 14 red and 0 green or 14 red and 9 green.

The green "requirement" essentially slow down hulk, by ensuring that you use up all your green first before using red. Which is consistent with his green too, if you store more green, his thunderous clap becomes more powerful.

Does that means he require a buff? I really don't think so because he's a well balanced character. It's just that in the meta of fast speedy wins, he's not that good.

I think that with the increase in generation, his value would have increased.

Some other characters I like to comment about:-

1) IM40 and GSBW. Both have expensive priced attacking skills, and AP generation capability. I think this is not a coincidence. D3 testing must have shown that AP generation is very powerful, and if they don't put a limiter on these characters they will get too strong. Unfortunately these means that their main attack costs so much more than usual. If we were to reduce the cost, they *may* become too good. I emphasise on the may, as it is unknown.

2) Characters with 2 active skills are also tricky to balance. If I understand correctly, they have greater match dmg and higher hp to balance for their lack of 3rd skill. I imagine that some aspects of this needs to be scaled back when they are given 3 skills. Having said that I think it will increase roster variety if we give them 3rd skill.

Unknown

I don't want to complain, but isn't it a bit unfair to some of these powers to use their 1 cover cost instead of their 5 cover cost? Sure, Loki B at 15 is expensive, but fully covered, it's only 11, which I think is actually fine. Same for Invisibility.

Spoit

atomzed wrote:

It's incorrect to say that Hulk smash uses 14 red and 10 green. It uses 14 red and up to 10 green.

It's an important distinction as you can be using it as 14 red and 0 green or 14 red and 9 green.

The green "requirement" essentially slow down hulk, by ensuring that you use up all your green first before using red. Which is consistent with his green too, if you store more green, his thunderous clap becomes more powerful.

Does that means he require a buff? I really don't think so because he's a well balanced character. It's just that in the meta of fast speedy wins, he's not that good.

I think that with the increase in generation, his value would have increased.

Some other characters I like to comment about:-

1) IM40 and GSBW. Both have expensive priced attacking skills, and AP generation capability. I think this is not a coincidence. D3 testing must have shown that AP generation is very powerful, and if they don't put a limiter on these characters they will get too strong. Unfortunately these means that their main attack costs so much more than usual. If we were to reduce the cost, they *may* become too good. I emphasise on the may, as it is unknown.

2) Characters with 2 active skills are also tricky to balance. If I understand correctly, they have greater match dmg and higher hp to balance for their lack of 3rd skill. I imagine that some aspects of this needs to be scaled back when they are given 3 skills. Having said that I think it will increase roster variety if we give them 3rd skill.

1. That may have been the case at launch, but now we have characters like LThor who can both generate more AP for himself, and tear kitties up with his powers. (FWIW, GSW's green costs are fine on offense, it's just that the AI cannot use the purple to save it's life, compared to LT's yellow, which fulfills a similar purpose, but with more damage and an AI-proof implementation). IM40's powers were already vastly overpriced to begin with, but with the power creep it's just comedy now, Pretty much any other red would be a better use with his recharge, and his blue is definitly not worth more than twice the AP of Cstorm's.

2. Match damage is based purely on *s and levels. And to add insult to injury, Ragman doesn't even have a primary color level match damage, just 2 'medium' ones. Ragman does have a fair ammount of health, but it's less than hulk's at the same level. Doom is in the same HP/level tier as LThor/BP. Loki actually has below average health/level

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

It's incorrect to say that Hulk smash uses 14 red and 10 green. It uses 14 red and up to 10 green.

It's an important distinction as you can be using it as 14 red and 0 green or 14 red and 9 green.

Although this distinction is technically correct, the original argument presented is still valid.

Using arbitrary numbers:

-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 0 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (14 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 1 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (15 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 5 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (19 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 10 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (24 AP)

So, whether or not a player expends 14 AP or 24 AP on the power, Smash still inflicts base damage. This is highly significant as (2400/14) = 171.4 damage/AP, which is meh, versus (2400/24 AP) = 100 damage/AP, which is outright horrible.

Granted the logical course of action here, as you mention, is to cast Green then Red to maximize damage. But Green, as a board reset, is highly likely to flood the board with fresh Greens, which will likely invoke the penalty clause on Smash.

Although I believe that the Green AP drain on Smash was meant to prohibit chaining the two moves together for game-ending damage (at least back when Hulk was launched), the way the power is written is probably meant to convert the consumed Green AP into additional damage to make Smash actually fearful as a 5-Red match power. (More so than his passive being his actual most fearsome ability).

-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 10 Green AP, with each Green AP inflicting 300 damage, then Smash inflicts 2400 + 3000 = 5400 damage. 5400/24 = 225 damage/AP, which is much more acceptable for a 24 AP power than the numbers above.

** At the time of the post, 150 5 Red Hulk does 2687 base + 320 for each counted Green AP over 10. **

Polares

Hulk is bad but IM40 is far worse, Salvo is not just 20 blue, it needs 10 more from other colors!!! (30 !!!) And Unibeam is 13 + 10 (23!!!). This is a rip-off!!!

His powers should be like Unibeam 8 red + 10 from oher colors, Salvo 14 blue + 10 from other colos. This simple change would make him playable.

atomzed

Spoit wrote:

atomzed wrote:

It's incorrect to say that Hulk smash uses 14 red and 10 green. It uses 14 red and up to 10 green.

It's an important distinction as you can be using it as 14 red and 0 green or 14 red and 9 green.

The green "requirement" essentially slow down hulk, by ensuring that you use up all your green first before using red. Which is consistent with his green too, if you store more green, his thunderous clap becomes more powerful.

Does that means he require a buff? I really don't think so because he's a well balanced character. It's just that in the meta of fast speedy wins, he's not that good.

I think that with the increase in generation, his value would have increased.

Some other characters I like to comment about:-

1) IM40 and GSBW. Both have expensive priced attacking skills, and AP generation capability. I think this is not a coincidence. D3 testing must have shown that AP generation is very powerful, and if they don't put a limiter on these characters they will get too strong. Unfortunately these means that their main attack costs so much more than usual. If we were to reduce the cost, they *may* become too good. I emphasise on the may, as it is unknown.

2) Characters with 2 active skills are also tricky to balance. If I understand correctly, they have greater match dmg and higher hp to balance for their lack of 3rd skill. I imagine that some aspects of this needs to be scaled back when they are given 3 skills. Having said that I think it will increase roster variety if we give them 3rd skill.

1. That may have been the case at launch, but now we have characters like LThor who can both generate more AP for himself, and tear kitties up with his powers. (FWIW, GSW's green costs are fine on offense, it's just that the AI cannot use the purple to save it's life, compared to LT's yellow, which fulfills a similar purpose, but with more damage and an AI-proof implementation). IM40's powers were already vastly overpriced to begin with, but with the power creep it's just comedy now, Pretty much any other red would be a better use with his recharge, and his blue is definitly not worth more than twice the AP of Cstorm's.

2. Match damage is based purely on *s and levels. And to add insult to injury, Ragman doesn't even have a primary color level match damage, just 2 'medium' ones. Ragman does have a fair ammount of health, but it's less than hulk's at the same level. Doom is in the same HP/level tier as LThor/BP. Loki actually has below average health/level

Don't get me wrong, I am not saying that those characters don't need a buff or an additional 3rd ability.

I'm just saying that it's not as easy as "reduce the cost", or "just give them a 3rd ability!"

atomzed

Lyrian wrote:

atomzed wrote:

It's incorrect to say that Hulk smash uses 14 red and 10 green. It uses 14 red and up to 10 green.

It's an important distinction as you can be using it as 14 red and 0 green or 14 red and 9 green.

Although this distinction is technically correct, the original argument presented is still valid.

Using arbitrary numbers:

-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 0 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (14 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 1 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (15 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 5 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (19 AP)
-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 10 Green AP, then Smash inflicts 2400 damage. (24 AP)

So, whether or not a player expends 14 AP or 24 AP on the power, Smash still inflicts base damage. This is highly significant as (2400/14) = 171.4 damage/AP, which is meh, versus (2400/24 AP) = 100 damage/AP, which is outright horrible.

Granted the logical course of action here, as you mention, is to cast Green then Red to maximize damage. But Green, as a board reset, is highly likely to flood the board with fresh Greens, which will likely invoke the penalty clause on Smash.

Although I believe that the Green AP drain on Smash was meant to prohibit chaining the two moves together for game-ending damage (at least back when Hulk was launched), the way the power is written is probably meant to convert the consumed Green AP into additional damage to make Smash actually fearful as a 5-Red match power. (More so than his passive being his actual most fearsome ability).

-- If a player casts Smash at 14 Red AP and 10 Green AP, with each Green AP inflicting 300 damage, then Smash inflicts 2400 + 3000 = 5400 damage. 5400/24 = 225 damage/AP, which is much more acceptable for a 24 AP power than the numbers above.

** At the time of the post, 150 5 Red Hulk does 2687 base + 320 for each counted Green AP over 10. **

I don't know, if you are going to make his red more fearful, he will probably shoot straight up to the top.

Maybe it's just me, but I like the way D3 is balancing the new characters. Sentry (self dmg), punk storm (low hp) and She hulk (interesting abilities but not OP). I know many want to have more Lthor characters to play with, but I think if you release more of such "brainless" characters, the meta becomes stale.

I think hulk is all right as he is now. As long as strike tile characters (like patch and daken) are popular, hulk will always have a place in the meta as an offensive combi. When his black triggers, you can easily store up to 30 AP for consecutive thunderous clap, which does a lot of board shake up and dmg

Unknown

Long time lurker, first time poster.

The key word in the conversation seems to be "overpriced", which is really about value. Ballistic Salvo might once have been balanced around it being attached to, at the time, one of the tankier characters, but it's laughable compared to LThor and Sentry's damage abilities so that argument is out. And taken on face value is there any circumstance where you wouldn't rather have two Wind Storms for 2 more blue and no rainbow drain? Probably not, so bad value. By comparison Ultra-Freon Beam is just expensive. At the one star level it's an atomic bomb, likely a match-ender that can swing a loss into a win. Maybe not the best value, but definitely not the worst.

So the question becomes what are you actually getting for the cost? What is the value of the power? Cap's yellow potentially provides a lot of protection but at a cost of 19 it's almost never useful by the time you can cast it. Grant invisibility has a similar problem. It's essentially a grantable version of Avoid, already largely considered a throwaway power, for the low low cost of 14 (at max level). So after five-ish matches you can...what? Maybe stop your squishy from taking more damage, assuming they haven't while you were screwing around collecting yellow for this marginal power, assuming the tile it creates doesn't immediately get destroyed rendering it all a total waste of time. 18 (!) purple for maxed Switcheroo is part of what makes Bagman such a joke. Control shift, same problem. Murderous Aim, ditto. At half those costs you might have decent powers.

Newcomer Reprieve might be the worst of the lot, and really highlights the value issue. 12 green is hardly the most expensive power on the list, but for what? A terrible heal (which came pre-nerfed, thanks True Healing) and a spin of the wheel that you might sap (not even steal) a color from the enemy that'll make a difference. It's so bad it almost makes Bewilder look good by comparison. Almost.

Unknown

I'm surprised there aren't more votes for She-hulk green - maybe people don't realize that it cuts a random color? That's right, not strongest or most ap, but random... and the healing isn't much either. I'll take Psylocke blue over it any day.

Also surprised at people knocking cap's yellow. Yes, you can't use it until the game is half over, but once you do you won't be taking match damage and it's really nice to have against AOE and damage over time. Plus since there are 3 tiles you're less likely to have it invalidated by an unlucky cascade.

Unknown

grimeon wrote:

Also surprised at people knocking cap's yellow. Yes, you can't use it until the game is half over, but once you do you won't be taking match damage and it's really nice to have against AOE and damage over time. Plus since there are 3 tiles you're less likely to have it invalidated by an unlucky cascade.

I think the larger problem is that 99% of the time you run with Cap, you're going to be running with LT or Hood. Both have superior yellows that you would rather use and end the match sooner.

Spoit

grimeon wrote:

I'm surprised there aren't more votes for She-hulk green - maybe people don't realize that it cuts a random color? That's right, not strongest or most ap, but random... and the healing isn't much either. I'll take Psylocke blue over it any day.

Also surprised at people knocking cap's yellow. Yes, you can't use it until the game is half over, but once you do you won't be taking match damage and it's really nice to have against AOE and damage over time. Plus since there are 3 tiles you're less likely to have it invalidated by an unlucky cascade.

Except by the time you'd get the yellow, you'd be able to get at least 2 blue tiles down, which is more than enough to block all incidental damage

Unknown

atomzed wrote:

I don't know, if you are going to make his red more fearful, he will probably shoot straight up to the top.

Maybe it's just me, but I like the way D3 is balancing the new characters. Sentry (self dmg), punk storm (low hp) and She hulk (interesting abilities but not OP). I know many want to have more Lthor characters to play with, but I think if you release more of such "brainless" characters, the meta becomes stale.

I think hulk is all right as he is now. As long as strike tile characters (like patch and daken) are popular, hulk will always have a place in the meta as an offensive combi. When his black triggers, you can easily store up to 30 AP for consecutive thunderous clap, which does a lot of board shake up and dmg

As a character Hulk is fine, but with the saturation on red there's almost no circumstances where you'd want to use Smash. It's a **** power on an otherwise good character, so fixing it would be low priority I suppose. Still, if it dealt damage for every green consumed rather than left over, it would still have a big enough drawback to require thoughtful use.

If this were the sort of game where balance issues were regularly addressed I'd say Smash is something the dev team should add to the list. But with it taking 6 months to get to balance fixes, I guess he's fine with only 2 powers.

Unknown

I hope devs are reading this thread. This is one of those useful threads. I have the feeling slowly it will go into oblivion cos it's so rare that devs implement any of the suggestions.

atomzed

RockMonster wrote:

If this were the sort of game where balance issues were regularly addressed I'd say Smash is something the dev team should add to the list. But with it taking 6 months to get to balance fixes, I guess he's fine with only 2 powers.

Yeah, that's my sentiment. Hulk is fine with only 2 useful power and 1 semi useless power. He should be low on the priority list.

I rather that they buffed up the other characters first.

Unknown

grimeon wrote:

I'm surprised there aren't more votes for She-hulk green - maybe people don't realize that it cuts a random color? That's right, not strongest or most ap, but random... and the healing isn't much either. I'll take Psylocke blue over it any day.

Also surprised at people knocking cap's yellow. Yes, you can't use it until the game is half over, but once you do you won't be taking match damage and it's really nice to have against AOE and damage over time. Plus since there are 3 tiles you're less likely to have it invalidated by an unlucky cascade.

Like Bagman's abilities, it's not OVERPRICED, it's just lousy. You have to change the ability to make it any good. Abilities like IM40's blue and Cap's yellow could be made good just by cutting the price.

Unknown

Zhirrzh wrote:

Like Bagman's abilities, [Reprieve is] not OVERPRICED, it's just lousy. You have to change the ability to make it any good.

I'm not sure that's fair with regards to Bagman (totally fair for Reprieve, which is terrible in all ways). With as much abuse as Bagman takes, with the understanding that he's really an anti-goon character his powers really aren't that bad. If at max covers Switcheroo cost 9, Web-Slinger cost 8, and Snarky Remark cost 6 he would be totally viable in PvE. It's just that 18 for Switcheroo is insane. 17 for Web-Slinger, likewise. Shave just one point off Snarky Remark and suddenly at the cost of just two yellow matches it would be way more useful. The problem with his powers is precisely that they're overpriced.