Strike Tiles

homeinvasion

Please don’t get me wrong, the diversity of abilities is a testament to the developers and a core reason it is addictive like crack. Attack tiles, strike tiles, defence tiles, traps, AOE, retaliation, team ups, true healing, fake healing, tile destruction, board shake etc are all proof that D3 work hard at game development. For Thor’s sake you have all bought online games where the dev’s just let the game fester. Praise Loki that this is not one of those games. Most times a new character comes out you have to look at it and think of possible combos, uses, teams etc, which keeps the momentum going for enthusiasm and keeps refreshing character team ups. Except it doesn’t. Mainly because there is a broken feature which can’t be beat, which is strike tiles.
Of themselves a strike tile is an ability that takes multiple turns to resolve. The issue is you have a scale of damage where strike tiles multiplied by abilities blows out the curve.
I think this perfectly demonstrates the core problem with balance and that the problem is not really with any character (although cmags is probably under cost, and I will try to talk about sentry later) it is that strike tiles multiply over ability damage, they need to be exclusive.

GSBW Green is 15 Green for 3 (characters) X 3912 Damage = 11,736 Damage
Versus
Berserker rage (9 green) + World Rupture (7 green) total 16 Green =
6 X 148 in strike tiles = 888
X 16 world rupture = 14,208 to each character
X 3 characters = 42,624 damage.
I realised it is actually more than this because of the base damage of world rupture, but it is 4 times as much damage, why would you bring a GSBW to a sentry fight?

I think if you just made strike tiles not increase the damage of abilities, which includes match damage from say Cmags abilities you would find that there is no longer just one unbeatable strategy.
Now for Sentry, the problem with all of this is that sentry’s core mechanic is based off this multiplication of strike tiles over low cost abilities. I would think that maybe his combo should be the exception just slightly scaled back a bit. Where by World Rupture still multiplies off sacrifice but not other strike tiles like pheromone rage.

OnesOwnGrief

Just a note, very few people actually use Patch and Sentry as a pair. Its not as fast as Sentry/Daken. Strike tiles aren't the problems that plague this game. Its the poor testing of new abilities and how it can exploit strike tiles. That's the real issue and there is really only 2 characters that can exploit it beyond any type of logic.

homeinvasion

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Just a note, very few people actually use Patch and Sentry as a pair. Its not as fast as Sentry/Daken. Strike tiles aren't the problems that plague this game. Its the poor testing of new abilities and how it can exploit strike tiles. That's the real issue and there is really only 2 characters that can exploit it beyond any type of logic.

I think if you look at the broken combos all of them involve strike tiles multiplied by too cheap abilities like Laken/ Mags or Laken/ Sentry, if you have a scale of damage for AP cost then you can define the parameters of the cost/ reward. It is the fact that a strike tile can be multiplied many times for a cumulative effect that is not mathematically in line with the scale. If they nerf Laken, Sentry and cmags the issue will just become the next cheapest abilities times the next easiest strike tiles.

Unknown

Strike tiles are generally too powerful to begin with. Run Falcon + Daken sometimes and just look at the damage you can pile up. Strike tiles tend to be involved in all the broken stuff because putting an ability that's already overpowered with a mechanism that's overpowered tends to lead to even more overpower. Prior to a rather significant nerf to his strike tiles, Daken 2* was usually the strongest opponent to face in PvE at high levels and he is rarely in a team that can abuse his strike tiles, but who needs cheap tricks when you can do 1000 damage from match 3s?

There isn't some kind of inherent problem with strike tiles and cheap abilities. This game already gives a bonus to damage done by expensive moves from design. If you have say a green move that does 1000 damage for 5 green AP, you can be pretty sure that another green move that uses 10 green AP will do more than 2000 damage, and often significantly more than 2000 damage. This breaks down for moves like Magnetized Particles but that move is broken even if it gains nothing from strike tiles.

homeinvasion

The first step in any scientific or mathematical problem is analysis.

Let’s look at 3* green powers, I have tried to take out defensive moves, board shake etc. We need to also be mindful that squishy characters tend to do more damage than tanks. So I’ve taken out Ragnarock & she hulk



Flame Jet - Green 5 AP Max Level: 270 per AP, max 2434

World Rupture - 7 Green AP Level 5: Impact extends further. Max: 864 allies / 2368 enemies + 16*(ally strike - enemy protect).

Judgement - Green 8 AP Level 5: Creates 3 Strike tiles. Max Level: Damage increased by 122 per Strike tile

Berserker Rage - 9 Green AP Max Level: Deals 2087 damage, 148 damage per Strike tiles for allies and enemies.

Thunderous Clap - Green 10 AP Max Level: Does 1199 damage.

Call The Storm - Green 14 AP Max Level: 4518 damage to target. 2259 damage to other enemies.

Sniper Rifle - Green 19 AP Max Level: 3912 + tile damage



There seems to be a scale there, that is quantifiable with Flame jet probably the best place to look 1AP = 270 damage and Sniper rifle seems to be about 1AP = 617 damage.

I estimate (loosely) that a strike tile is an ability that should be on the board for around 4 turns so berserkers looks like this:

2087 + (148 X 6 in strikes) = 2087 +(888 in strikes)

For the average 4 turns we see something like this

2087 + (888 X 4) or 2087 + 3552 = 5,639 for 9AP, I think we are roughly in scale here. (I don’t know the core scales or maths and this is all quick speculation).

The imbalance seems to come from some abilities scaling off strike tiles and some not. Let’s say flame jet is enhanced by strike tiles, then you have a fixed cost of 9 green for berserkers and a variable cost of the flame jet and you end up with things that are out of scale.

1AP = 270 + 888 strike tiles = 1,158 damage per AP.

Unknown

Berserker Rage has extra favorable numbers because it hands an equal amount of strike tiles to the other side. The abilities it combos well tend to be already broken by themselves, like Magneto's red/blue, or even the pre nerf Mistress of the Storm. Strike tiles amplify broken abilities but they're not the sole cause. I remember running Psylocke + Patch for the limited roster heroic Oscorp and even though she has some of the cheapest cost ability in the game (6 for Psi-Katana, and attack tiles benefit from strike tiles too) it still took decent amount of AP before you have enough to make sure you can kill everyone in one turn, since any counterattack is going to be very devastating. Usually I'd need at something like 1 Psi-Katana + 1 Psychic Knife, or 2 Psi-Katanas (which is the same cost as Rage of the Panther). It did seem kind of cheap to get 5 1.5K+ attacks off in one turn in a sequence like Berserker Rage -> Psychic Knife -> Psi Katana X 2 -> attack tile from Psi Katana, but that's 9g + 8r + 12black so maybe it's okay to have that kind of power, and that's about the cheapest you can go in terms of AP that doesn't involve Magneto.

homeinvasion

Phantron wrote:

Berserker Rage has extra favorable numbers because it hands an equal amount of strike tiles to the other side. The abilities it combos well tend to be already broken by themselves, like Magneto's red/blue, or even the pre nerf Mistress of the Storm. Strike tiles amplify broken abilities but they're not the sole cause. I remember running Psylocke + Patch for the limited roster heroic Oscorp and even though she has some of the cheapest cost ability in the game (6 for Psi-Katana, and attack tiles benefit from strike tiles too) it still took decent amount of AP before you have enough to make sure you can kill everyone in one turn, since any counterattack is going to be very devastating. Usually I'd need at something like 1 Psi-Katana + 1 Psychic Knife, or 2 Psi-Katanas (which is the same cost as Rage of the Panther). It did seem kind of cheap to get 5 1.5K+ attacks off in one turn in a sequence like Berserker Rage -> Psychic Knife -> Psi Katana X 2 -> attack tile from Psi Katana, but that's 9g + 8r + 12black so maybe it's okay to have that kind of power, and that's about the cheapest you can go in terms of AP that doesn't involve Magneto.

Thanks for the feedback, I tend to think any time there is a problem to look for recurring themes, common denominators or similar results, and every time there seems to be strike tiles involved. Like why do some abilities scale off strike and some don't?

homeinvasion

Phantron wrote:

Berserker Rage has extra favorable numbers because it hands an equal amount of strike tiles to the other side. The abilities it combos well tend to be already broken by themselves, like Magneto's red/blue, or even the pre nerf Mistress of the Storm. Strike tiles amplify broken abilities but they're not the sole cause. I remember running Psylocke + Patch for the limited roster heroic Oscorp and even though she has some of the cheapest cost ability in the game (6 for Psi-Katana, and attack tiles benefit from strike tiles too) it still took decent amount of AP before you have enough to make sure you can kill everyone in one turn, since any counterattack is going to be very devastating. Usually I'd need at something like 1 Psi-Katana + 1 Psychic Knife, or 2 Psi-Katanas (which is the same cost as Rage of the Panther). It did seem kind of cheap to get 5 1.5K+ attacks off in one turn in a sequence like Berserker Rage -> Psychic Knife -> Psi Katana X 2 -> attack tile from Psi Katana, but that's 9g + 8r + 12black so maybe it's okay to have that kind of power, and that's about the cheapest you can go in terms of AP that doesn't involve Magneto.

Thanks for the feedback, I tend to think any time there is a problem to look for recurring themes, common denominators or similar results, and every time there seems to be strike tiles involved. Like why do some abilities scale off strike and some don't?

Unknown

One possible consideration would be changing strike tiles from being additive to being multipliers applied to all damage but doing so would favor large damaging abilities more than small quick abilities. Maybe this would be a good thing since the large damaging abilities usually cost more to fire off.

One small multiplier strike tile would only be doing something like 1% extra damage but a Berserker Rage would make everything double damage time.

Hmm could be fun to have a separate kind of tile that is a damage multiplier in addition to conventional strikes (or shield multiplier we can go both directions)

Just brainstorming now, what if strike tiles had a multiplier ~and~ a static damage bonus but balanced so small, medium and large damaging attacks would all get roughly equal amount of benefit from strike tile usage, instead ofhow it is now being skewed heavily in favor of the small cheap attacks

Unknown

There's already a general scene of higher cost abilities scale better than linearly compared to their cheaper counterpart, though you've to keep in mind that characters with more HP are supposed to have weaker abilities compared to character with lower HP. Of course there are always going to be lapses in balance. Even if World Rupture gets only 50% off strike tile it is still way too good since it can potentially benefit 48 times per strike tiles (16 CDs X 3 targets hit per CD). Magnetized Particles can benefit nothing from strike tiles and it's still overpowered at the 2 AP version by just spamming it over and over since it's almost self sustaining via cascades. Strike tile just lets you finish the job in a tolerable time frame.

Abilities with drawbacks tend to have better than usual conversion ratios, though again not all drawbacks are created equal. Berserker Rage's drawback is considerable in the absence of Magneto as it can easily get your team killed if the enemy pulls off a good cascade, while Rage of the Panther's drawback rarely matters because the enemy team is typically dead after you use it, and yet Rage of the Panther sure gains a lot of extra power (it hits far harder than any comparable cost black ability) for a drawback that rarely matters. But that's a balance issue, not some kind of inherent flaw of a high/low cost ability.

Unknown

The problem with that equation isn't the strike tiles, its World Rupture. Stirke tiles aren't broken. They are unbiased damage increase. You place them, you use them, they make damage. Done. World Rupture is broken as hell. 20 potential AoE damage sources, each being affected by strike tiles individually, plus placement that virtually guarentees positive cascades. Were you smoking crack when you came up with this power?

Here's the general problem with game balance. It's done in a vacuum. On it's own, World Rupture isn't actually all that broken. Maybe a bit OP, but in line with, say, Call The Storm. World Rupture (assuming no broken tiles) - 2368 to each enemy, twice is 4736x3=14,208 damage (with 5,184 team damage) for just over 9,000 damage gain. Call The Storm is 7,708 damage. Not too far off. It's only when it's combined with other powers than it's flaws are revealed.

World Rupture doesn't prove strike tiles are broken. Strike tiles proves World Rupture is broken.

Unknown

Call the Storm is pretty much top of the line for green abilities so being as good as Call the Storm is still pretty powerful, but without strike tiles at least it's not something no other ability even comes close to.

OnesOwnGrief

Cryptobrancus wrote:

One possible consideration would be changing strike tiles from being additive to being multipliers applied to all damage but doing so would favor large damaging abilities more than small quick abilities. Maybe this would be a good thing since the large damaging abilities usually cost more to fire off.

One small multiplier strike tile would only be doing something like 1% extra damage but a Berserker Rage would make everything double damage time.

Hmm could be fun to have a separate kind of tile that is a damage multiplier in addition to conventional strikes (or shield multiplier we can go both directions)

Just brainstorming now, what if strike tiles had a multiplier ~and~ a static damage bonus but balanced so small, medium and large damaging attacks would all get roughly equal amount of benefit from strike tile usage, instead ofhow it is now being skewed heavily in favor of the small cheap attacks

That was how Falcon was originally released. His Yellow was percentage based and the stronger the special tile was, the bigger the buff. That was a flawed design and benefited the strongest above anyone else.

Unknown

The trouble with original falcon was his percentages stacked on percentages and things went crazy from there. Additive percent multipliers could be contained without the exponential gain that falcon was seeing. Some strike tiles could add a mere 2% damage per tile which would take 50 of to cause double damage attacks. Stronger ones could do higher percentages of course but would need to avoid multipliers stacking on top of multipliers.

CrookedKnight

I think the easiest way to solve this would be to make it so some powers that create multiple damage ticks still only get a single bonus from strike tiles. You don't have to change anything about how the power functions other than that, and it can be tailored so powers that aren't broken by interacting with strike tiles still get their full benefit and remain usable. World Rupture gets effectively nerfed, but I find myself unsympathetic to that.

Dayv

Detonate all the world rupture tiles as one attack, and cascades do damage normally after that. Fixed.

GrumpySmurf1002

Much simpler fix than bringing math in: Don't let strike tiles affect powers.

Let them continue to modify match-3 damage. But no double-dipping strike tiles on OBW's espionage, no hitting on every WR countdown, no making Deadpool's red a potential kill shot.

Sure, Falcon-Daken still creates massive damage eventually, but the Sentry-Daken instakill is gone, which is the biggest reason to discuss their elimination anyway..

Unknown

Or have a soft cap on strike tiles. So at most the can only double damage done per attack. So a WR doing 200 a tic with 800 worth of strike tiles out will still only do 400 a tic, max instead of 1000 per tile. Stronger attacks can get more usefulness out of big strikes while things like WR, and cMags would have a harder time murdering everything.

Unknown

You don't need band aid fixes like capping strike tile damage or make them not work with power or maybe scale with the power cost. The problem is that almost all strike tiles have values that are too high to begin with. This game has some really bad assumption built into the game. Falcon's ability buffs strike tile, attack tile, and protect tile by an equal amount, even though the three are not anywhere close to the same value. Aside from World Rupture which interacts in a very bad way with strike tiles, the only problem with strike tile is their magnitude. Nobody thought Psychic Knife or Settlement is overpowered, because the amount they produce is a lot less compared to Judgment, Sacrifice, or Phermone Rage. In fact Settlement offers a very clear picture of how messed up the design is. Settlement, which might as well be called 'Anti-Judgment', is almost certain to contribute less strike tile damage over time if there was even a couple turns between Judgment and Settlement (and obviously Settlement can never be used before Judgment). The only time you'll come out ahead is if you used a Settlement immediately after Judgment, and yet this is an ability that is clearly designed to counter Judgment. Both abilities generate strike tiles, so it's not a problem with any inherent property of the strike tiles themselves. Settlement is bad because the numbers it produces is just not enough, or Judgment is too much, though whether Judgment gets nerfed for 60X3 or Settlement gets bumped to 250X2 is exactly the same thing when comparing these two abilities.