balancing the Big 5

Unknown

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

stephen43084 wrote:

JCTthe3rd81 wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Wasn't arguing for infinite turns, just saying you can't go and cripple every good characters if they're going to give us nodes like that.
And good luck doing 27k worth of damage with those characters before getting wiped out. You can't keep him stunned indefinitely and while you're working on getting AP for the next one, or trying to get some protect tiles out, or trying to get some web tiles out to buff the protect tiles, you're going to get pummeled.

I'm going to give up one of my strategies here just to prove you're wrong.

Use Steve Rogers with MN Mags, then toss in OBW or Hood. Mags purple will feed Caps blue. Cap and Mag is one of the teams I used in the Combined Arms event. I was able to keep, not 1 but 2 opponents indefinitely stun locked. I tried to use the +6 Ap boosts and keep all 3 stunned, but that required too many Ap. One of them would always un-stun and get in a few hits. Not only do you keep your enemy stunned, but once you get going, and figure out how to rotate Caps blue, then you get an extra protect tile every turn.

During this time, you should have been able to get enough red for Steve Rogers' red, this will do enough damage to take on even a 395 Hulk with little or no trouble.

Unless you get a stale board witn no blue or purple, then you're just screwed.

Keep in mind, this strategy will not work for speed matches. You'll need a few turns to build up your blue and purple Ap. There is a bit more to it, but I can't give up ALL my secrets now can I ?

JJ

I appreciate your insight. This used to be a lot more common on the forum. Advice and insight that were especially helpful to newer players.

Now, well, everyone can see loads of the garbage the forum is full with now. Instead of talking about how to max strategy in the current version of the game, a lot of talk is spent criticizing, wishing, and witch hunting.

Could not agree more. People get so upset over things that don't even affect them half the time. Making a complaint is one thing if it's valid, but the negativity on here is a bit much at times. (yes, I know, complaining about complainers and all that)

When I play MPQ I treat it like chess. A good strategy can allow me to beat just about any team. Even max Sentry/Daken. Maybe I, or someone, should start a thread, maybe in the tips and tricks section, offering little strategies about the game. Nothing big or anything. Some of my little tricks I keep to myself. It is a competion after all.

Like using DareDevil and Bagman together. DD places a trap, then Bagman moves other tiles around it to make it into a match, or a match 4 if possible. Or use MN Mags to place 4 blue in line with the trap. The Ai takes the blue match 4 and sets off the trap. Or like using Dr. Doom and OBW together. With OBW's espionage she can fill Doom's black and blue in no time. Toss in a strike tile generater and the attack tiles do all the work.

That's more like "I'm bored with chess so I'm going to create my own fun by trying to arrange my pieces into smiley face patterns." Which is fine as far as it goes, but presumably we want to make actual chess more fun here

Phaserhawk

Daken is very simple. I do think his strike tile value needs to go down abit, but not by what was shown a few patches ago. 50 per strike tile is a nice round and fair number. It is a tad more than a 25% dmg decrease and puts him inline with Punisher. As Punisher gets about 366 value strike tiles at 8, or roughly 3 matches, at 50 this would give Daken 300 strike tiles with about 3 matches.

LThor a slight dmg decrease on yellow and he's fine. I'm talking about maybe a 5-10% reduction.

Patch If anything this guy is gonna need a buff after C.Mags gets nerfed, just look at red.

C.Mags red to 5, with more dmg. blue i'm not sure. Purple increase the amount of dmg per match, decrease the number of matches required. Seriously, when are you going to have 13 blue and 13 red?.

Sentry red, slight dmg increase to enemies, slight dmg reduction your team. yellow, is okay as draw back balances power. Green, keep as is but make it cost 12 to 14. This shouldn't be doing more dmg than Call of the Storm, however, Thor has Thunderstrike to build into CoT, thus I would be okay with World Rupture at 12. Even at 12 it's still game ending then you don't have to change anything with the skill or functionality itself.

High health guys should be slow by massively powerful.
Low health guys should be fast and strong

Taking Hulk out of equation, we have 4 health levels. 5100, 6800, 8500, 10200.

Anyone at 10200, should do a lot of dmg, but the balance of it is they are slow and Sentyr counters this

5100 should be quick and hit hard too or have massively powerful support abilties

6800 should be slower than 5100's but quicker than those above them, but they do less dmg than their 5100 counterparts,

8500 should be faster than the 10200 guys, but do less dmg

If they would stick to this you would see much more balance in the game. Sentry alone is as fast as a 5100 but hits like a 10200, this can't be. There are other characters in similar dire straights. Deadpool for example is about as fast as an 8500 when you avg his skills, but he doesn't have the hp they do.

In short, it's Sentry, we all know it. His game design is broken when applied into PvP where he is abused constantly. Just like Spiderman warped PvE but wasn't that big of an issue in PvP as he was slow and easily defeated. I actually like Sentry's game mechanics and how it all interacts, but not at the cost, it is wayyyy too cheap for what it does and that is what needs to be changed. When a character can win the game once reaching a combine 15AP in green and yellow, that's 5 turns the hard way, that is not good.

Unknown

Do people just not notice that Phermone Rage works on other team's matches too when comparing it to other strike tile generating abilities? If it was on a color like purple at least you can say they wasted a match on an often unusable color, but green tile is prime estate in MPQ.

FaerieMyst

I just realized that none of this 'Big 5' are maxed in my roster. Eventually they will be but while I play with them, none of them are standouts in my play style.

Now if Sentry were a real person, I definitely would avoid him. This dude is in need of some serious therapy. Both Thors would get time out for shouting all the time. Inside voices, please. CMags is a bright guy so I'm thinking if we spent some time at the Fashion Week websites, maybe flip through a few Vanity Fairs, we could do better in the clothes department. I'd slip Patch some weed. He could stand to be a bit mellower. I think Daken is perfect in all his psychotic glory which is more an indicator of my dysfunction.

That said - they need neither buff nor nerf. Not characters are created equal.

Unknown

Daken is fine. The only reason people think he's amazing is he is literally idiot proof so the terrible AI can't screw him up. If you can't kill something with 6800 health and a 400 and a bit regen per turn then you shouldn't be attacking that team. His strike tile generation is fine as is. In a lot of matches he'really doesn't ramp up damage all that quickly compared to other heroes using actives.

Lazy Thor is pretty much the same deal. No way to really screw up using his abilities so the AI does a reasonable job with him. On the other hand he is a pretty slow to get going hero. His red is pretty bad at making yellow cascades so you're really only looking to stop him getting to 12 yellow or 14 green which is not exactly a massive hardship.

Patch shouldn't even be being discussed. He is only used so much because of the way C.Mags can abuse his strikes in an eternal turn of damage.

C.Mags is getting nerfed apparently and is only good because his abilities are exploitable with strikes. Expect him to become trash tier if they ever actually get around to ruining him.

Sentry is basically your pay to win hero. He lets you win incredibly fast which people use to balance out the terrible PvP mechanics in this game. Without boosts he's still pretty beastly but if EITHER 3 green or yellow matches aren't forthcoming he's pretty bad because a strike free WR is terrible, a single yellow strike costing health is very vulnerable and his red really stings your own team. Pretty much every other hero can cope much better if one of two of their colours is scarce/denied

If you decide to nerf Sentry the only real impact is to reduce overall PvP scores and make it harder for everyone to reach 1100 and 1300 rewards, especially if C.Mags gets the treatment aswell removing Patchneto. Very little else. If you are losing to Sentry on a regular basis then either get a better lineup of heroes or practice denying one of two colours, ideally yellow and you should be good.

As far as Daken goes he's in a lot of teams with Sentry but really not needed in there. People with a 5 black Hood will give Daken the boot because he adds so little to the team in that instance. Outside of Sentry pairings I don't see him massively more than other heroes.

I find a lot of people playing this game to be entirely schizophrenic. They want to win easily on offence (because taking damage is a real pain, especially with a more limited 3* roster.) but they ALSO want to be resilient on defence and get skips or wins (so presumably attacking is hard for everyone else).

They then want the game to NOT be too pay to win BUT want to reach their progression rewards without spending money which requires people with massive scores to use at the end of your pre-hop run and in your hops. I'm not sure how you expect people to get those massive scores you want to feed off without a having the option to do something you're not (being willing to spend money to hop which ppl will obviously only do if hopping is worth it, thus needing fast hops with Sentry).

TLDR you can beat any set of heroes with 3 similar levelled heroes because the AI is terrible. The only reason popular heroes are popular is either because they win fast, avoid too much damage or take longer for other people to kill putting them off hitting you (or a combination of the above) and altering those heroes will have the net effect of reducing PvP scores overall and bugger all else.

Unknown

I really don't get the 'it's not overpowered, it's just the game is easy' posts. So where are the guys that are cleaning up in PvE and PvP using none of the Big 5 characters for max level characters (sometimes random 2* do well but that's probably scaling)? Where are the guys beating the heroic events that almost never have any of the big 5 against level 300 enemies? Go to the current event and find a node with level 150-190 enemies and don't pick anyone out of the listed 5 characters and see how easy it is to punch through Daken's regen or withstand Ares's Onslaught. If you actually believed none of those characters are overpowered then heroic events are no big deal right? After all if nobody's overpowered then having to put a team like Falcon + IM40 + HT is surely just as good as Magneto + Daken + Thor or Sentry? Of course usually the guys saying everything is balanced is the first guy complaining about how the hero selection of a limited roster event sucks.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I really don't get the 'it's not overpowered, it's just the game is easy' posts. So where are the guys that are cleaning up in PvE and PvP using none of the Big 5 characters for max level characters (sometimes random 2* do well but that's probably scaling)? Where are the guys beating the heroic events that almost never have any of the big 5 against level 300 enemies? Go to the current event and find a node with level 150-190 enemies and don't pick anyone out of the listed 5 characters and see how easy it is to punch through Daken's regen or withstand Ares's Onslaught. If you actually believed none of those characters are overpowered then heroic events are no big deal right? After all if nobody's overpowered then having to put a team like Falcon + IM40 + HT is surely just as good as Magneto + Daken + Thor or Sentry? Of course usually the guys saying everything is balanced is the first guy complaining about how the hero selection of a limited roster event sucks.

Yup. You get almost nothing for beating a team - almost everything of worth is gotten by doing BETTER at beating teams (faster, less damage taken, etc) than everyone else.

Who cares if you can win a battle with daredevil and ragnarok? Get a higher score than me in a pve or pvp using only that team while I use Thor, sentry, and Daken, and then I'll be impressed.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I really don't get the 'it's not overpowered, it's just the game is easy' posts. So where are the guys that are cleaning up in PvE and PvP using none of the Big 5 characters for max level characters (sometimes random 2* do well but that's probably scaling)? Where are the guys beating the heroic events that almost never have any of the big 5 against level 300 enemies? Go to the current event and find a node with level 150-190 enemies and don't pick anyone out of the listed 5 characters and see how easy it is to punch through Daken's regen or withstand Ares's Onslaught. If you actually believed none of those characters are overpowered then heroic events are no big deal right? After all if nobody's overpowered then having to put a team like Falcon + IM40 + HT is surely just as good as Magneto + Daken + Thor or Sentry? Of course usually the guys saying everything is balanced is the first guy complaining about how the hero selection of a limited roster event sucks.

I've been using Falcon more than any other hero this PvE so I don't get why you are picking on him and HT is also great in PvE so your basically saying don't use IM40? (fair enough, he does suck). In fact I would go as far as to say I prefer HT to Thor in PvE and the only reason I don't use him more is because he's 50 levels below my other heroes, limiting him to my lower level fights. If he was lvl 166 he'd get more use than anyone else. Only Patchneto is really broken in PvE (cause of C.Mags) so i'm not really sure what you're saying about a "big 5" in PvE.

Also ever considered people might complain about limited roster PvE events because they simply don't have the levels in the heroes that have been picked? Scaling doesn't seem to take that into account and picking a small number of heroes to level first is incredibly common meaning there will be plenty of 3* heroes you have which are seriously underlevelled.

Finally, the reason people don't clear up in PvP with heroes like HT is because PvP is all about speed of wins, health loss and whether people skip you for someone else (whcih only lasts at lower points anyway). So your definition of overpowered is anyone who can win quickly, has regen or has enough health with some threat of damage to look like they are skippable?

That's an issue of PvP game design and nerfing heroes around that mechanic will only mean lower pvp scores and nothing else. People won't suddenly diversify their roster because they can still use the same heroes, just not as well and there are no better options. It's not so quick and easy for ppl to level up a new 3* and again, unless you make the ones they did first unusable why bother?

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I really don't get the 'it's not overpowered, it's just the game is easy' posts. So where are the guys that are cleaning up in PvE and PvP using none of the Big 5 characters for max level characters (sometimes random 2* do well but that's probably scaling)? Where are the guys beating the heroic events that almost never have any of the big 5 against level 300 enemies? Go to the current event and find a node with level 150-190 enemies and don't pick anyone out of the listed 5 characters and see how easy it is to punch through Daken's regen or withstand Ares's Onslaught. If you actually believed none of those characters are overpowered then heroic events are no big deal right? After all if nobody's overpowered then having to put a team like Falcon + IM40 + HT is surely just as good as Magneto + Daken + Thor or Sentry? Of course usually the guys saying everything is balanced is the first guy complaining about how the hero selection of a limited roster event sucks.

I've been using Falcon more than any other hero this PvE so I don't get why you are picking on him and HT is also great in PvE so your basically saying don't use IM40? (fair enough, he does suck). In fact I would go as far as to say I prefer HT to Thor in PvE and the only reason I don't use him more is because he's 50 levels below my other heroes, limiting him to my lower level fights. If he was lvl 166 he'd get more use than anyone else. Only Patchneto is really broken in PvE (cause of C.Mags) so i'm not really sure what you're saying about a "big 5" in PvE.

Also ever considered people might complain about limited roster PvE events because they simply don't have the levels in the heroes that have been picked? Scaling doesn't seem to take that into account and picking a small number of heroes to level first is incredibly common meaning there will be plenty of 3* heroes you have which are seriously underlevelled.

Finally, the reason people don't clear up in PvP with heroes like HT is because PvP is all about speed of wins, health loss and whether people skip you for someone else (whcih only lasts at lower points anyway). So your definition of overpowered is anyone who can win quickly, has regen or has enough health with some threat of damage to look like they are skippable?

That's an issue of PvP game design and nerfing heroes around that mechanic will only mean lower pvp scores and nothing else. People won't suddenly diversify their roster because they can still use the same heroes, just not as well and there are no better options. It's not so quick and easy for ppl to level up a new 3* and again, unless you make the ones they did first unusable why bother?

I actually look at things similarly. To me, there are characters designed primarily for PVE--the Captain Americas, Captain Marvel, Falcon, IM40, MMN, Bagman, etc.

Unknown

I picked HT + Falcon + IM40 because I don't want to purposely pick 3 heroes that totally suck. That's 3 3*s which is generally all you're getting from 3* allotment in a limited roster event, and 2 out of those 3 guys are good. There is no one that can generate strike tiles, but I don't remember Falcon ever showing up in a limited roster event with another strong strike tile generator because I'd have definitely used that combination if it existed. This is likely stronger than the average roster you can put together from the generic limited roster event, and I'll bet you'll still have an awful hard time beating anything in the level 150+ range. Sure, you can do it, but it'll be costly on health packs and sometimes you might not even win depending on the calibur on the enemy (for example, if facing 2 out of 3 of Ares/Daken/Juggernaut). This isn't about winning fast. This is about winning at all. The Daken + Soldier + Lieutenant node in the bottom right in heroic Juggernaut is generally considered off limits once it hits 150 or so, but it'd be easily beatable with a normal roster. From discussion on heroic Juggernaut most people made at most one pass on that node because the chance of losing is too great.

Unknown

I reckon I could do that node at lvl 150 with those 3 3* heroes if my HT was 166.Use my 1 yellow IM40 (saved for PvE thanks to OTERSEY pointing out how useful it is), red/yellow +3 and a fairly early double fireball on Daken then it's east enough.

It's not like subbing one of those heroes out for Patch or Thor suddenly makes it easy. Is your point that Patchneto trivializes PvE and any time you can't use them and only have 3 3*s to use meaning you can't spread the pain around then over scaled fights become a real pain and burn through health packs? If so i'll agree but don't see the relevance to anything other than Patchneto as a pairing and more specifically C.Mags ability to do an insane number of damage instances with a modest amount of AP.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

I reckon I could do that node at lvl 150 with those 3 3* heroes if my HT was 166.Use my 1 yellow IM40 (saved for PvE thanks to OTERSEY pointing out how useful it is), red/yellow +3 and a fairly early double fireball on Daken then it's east enough.

It's not like subbing one of those heroes out for Patch or Thor suddenly makes it easy. Is your point that Patchneto trivializes PvE and any time you can't use them and only have 3 3*s to use meaning you can't spread the pain around then over scaled fights become a real pain and burn through health packs? If so i'll agree but don't see the relevance to anything other than Patchneto as a pairing and more specifically C.Mags ability to do an insane number of damage instances with a modest amount of AP.

I'm saying it's not a case where the weaker characters can get the job done but just slower (not that this makes it balanced even if it's true). There's a lot of limited roster event where you're often wondering if a certain node is even beatable at all even though that node would be quite trivial with your standard roster. The Big 5 elevates your chance of winning to somewhere around 99%, and after you move away from those guys the chance of winning drops off considerably from 99%. Again, I didn't purposely pick a super weak team to use, but you certainly won't be able to say HT + Falcon + IM40 can win with 99% confidence against a typical level 150 node featuring a strong mix of enemies. Sure you can still win but I'm guessing you didn't do the bottom right node more than 3 times in the last cycle even though it was the highest point node that wasn't an essential, because it's just too dangerous to gamble 3 times on that node in the last cycle. But if you had Magneto or Thor you'd definitely clear that 3 times (if you had the time) because now it's no longer much of a gamble. The power level of the top tier characters versus rest is not an issue of easy versus easier. It's usually more like can or cannot. Unless the game changes in a way such that health packs are much easier to obtain, taking less damage is not a convenience. It's a matter of can or cannot because your health packs cannot hold under sustained punishment.

Phaserhawk

I for one would rather first see BWGS, IM40, Daredevil, Spiderman (a little bit), and a few more I can't think of get a buff first rather than nerfing everyone. Imagine if BWGS's green cost 14 instead of 19? Imagine if her red did a bit more damage. Well all of a sudden she becomes a high damage low health beast that can compete. What if IM40 didn't drain your AP, could use red at 8, use blue at 12, and have a lower costed yellow? What if Daredevil's traps were all random on where they went? All of a sudden you have characters that once the dust settles could shake up the big 5. There are a few broken things, like C.Mags and the spam, yes that does have to go although I"ll miss. Because the bigger problem is, no matter how much you nerf the top guys, they will still be the top guys, because the bottom rung is so unplayable. Sure you could bring the big 5 into the mid tier, but then you have a bunch of average guys, and a bunch of **** ones. In the end I want more playable characters not nerfs.

Dauthi

Dartmaster01 wrote:

I see what you are saying but I think balancing is needed not nerfs to overpowered characters. People have to be more valuable than others, this game is all about supply and demand. Demand for these so-called overpowered characters makes lots of money for their events and covers sales because supply is generally low.

I'll put it like this, how many people spent HP thrying to get Fury covers in the past week? No would play or spend a dime on this game if every character was some version of bagman.

Sorry, but the line of logic I bolded makes no sense in a game setting. Would you play monopoly if anyone who started with the car or hat got extra money? Balancing characters creates strategy by creating teams who have synergy rather than characters who are simply strong.

On the main topic:

I just wish they would nerf C.Mags asap. Spiderman was no stronger than C.Mags is, except Spiderman did 0 damage making the battle winnable, but VERY long. So why is C.Mags still broken? Any of the other characters mentioned in this thread can't hold a candle to how powerful he is.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I for one would rather first see BWGS, IM40, Daredevil, Spiderman (a little bit), and a few more I can't think of get a buff first rather than nerfing everyone. Imagine if BWGS's green cost 14 instead of 19? Imagine if her red did a bit more damage. Well all of a sudden she becomes a high damage low health beast that can compete. What if IM40 didn't drain your AP, could use red at 8, use blue at 12, and have a lower costed yellow? What if Daredevil's traps were all random on where they went? All of a sudden you have characters that once the dust settles could shake up the big 5. There are a few broken things, like C.Mags and the spam, yes that does have to go although I"ll miss. Because the bigger problem is, no matter how much you nerf the top guys, they will still be the top guys, because the bottom rung is so unplayable. Sure you could bring the big 5 into the mid tier, but then you have a bunch of average guys, and a bunch of **** ones. In the end I want more playable characters not nerfs.

When a character's ability does twice the damage as it should there's no clean way to balance, and that's just Thor who arguably isn't as broken as Daken, which in term isn't as broken as Sentry or Magneto. Ballistic Salvo and Sniper Rifle both has to do at least double its current damage to be remotely on par with Call the Storm, or you can just reduce Call the Storm's damage by 50% instead of increasing a lot of abilities by 100%.

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

Sorry, but the line of logic I bolded makes no sense in a game setting. Would you play monopoly if anyone who started with the car or hat got extra money? Balancing characters creates strategy by creating teams who have synergy rather than characters who are simply strong.

There's this fallacy of 'well nothing is ever balanced so why bother?' After all the guy who moves first in Monopoly has an advantage over the guys who didn't move first. But it's one thing to say someone who is maybe 10-20% better than average like Punisher, or someone like Thor who is more like 100% better than the average.

Dauthi

I find it ironic that everyone hates true healing because it cut down on how long they can play, yet this poll shows most people also want to buff all the characters rather than nerf overpowered ones. I guess they don't realize that if everyone is as strong as C.Mags or Sentry the chances of them taking damage increases dramatically. Bad luck or a mistake in any game would result in wiping out their team rather than take some damage.

True healing created the need to decrease damage values, not increase values across the board. Increasing values means turning the game over to luck of the tiles more than strategy.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

I for one would rather first see BWGS, IM40, Daredevil, Spiderman (a little bit), and a few more I can't think of get a buff first rather than nerfing everyone. Imagine if BWGS's green cost 14 instead of 19? Imagine if her red did a bit more damage. Well all of a sudden she becomes a high damage low health beast that can compete. What if IM40 didn't drain your AP, could use red at 8, use blue at 12, and have a lower costed yellow? What if Daredevil's traps were all random on where they went? All of a sudden you have characters that once the dust settles could shake up the big 5. There are a few broken things, like C.Mags and the spam, yes that does have to go although I"ll miss. Because the bigger problem is, no matter how much you nerf the top guys, they will still be the top guys, because the bottom rung is so unplayable. Sure you could bring the big 5 into the mid tier, but then you have a bunch of average guys, and a bunch of **** ones. In the end I want more playable characters not nerfs.

GSBW: I still wouldn't play her
IM40: Depending on how cheap his yellow was, he'd either still be unplayable or he'd just be the new Sentry
DD: Still wouldn't play him

And this is the dilemma with "just buff the other chars": the big 5 (except possibly patch) win battles quickly and almost effortlessly. If they bring all the other characters up, there would be no change in the game because they'd still be worse than cMags and Sentry. If they made them all as powerful as cMags and Sentry, it wouldn't matter who you picked because you're just going to wipe the other team effortlessly anyways. If, on the other hand, they brought the Big 5 down to the level of Psylocke, Punisher, HT, Falcon - you know, the guys who don't suck but you never use unless you're trying to amuse yourself - THEN the game would start feeling diverse

Coppertouret

why bother nerfing cmags? He's only op on offense, ai can't use him for tinykitty. I'd gladly fight him over sentry.

Unknown

Nerfing is never good. Once you have nerfed something it usually gets dialed back way too much. Buffing others is definitely the way to go. You have some amazing heroes (Spider-Man, Daredevil, Iron Man, She-hulk) and every villian who aren't Hood or C Mags who just aren't worth playing. Buff them all. Even buff the ones who are good but just not top tier (L Cap, L Storm, HT, BP, Falcon). People are much less likely to complain about a buff then about a nerf.