*** Colossus (Classic) ***

OnesOwnGrief

Spoit wrote:

But really, I'm not sure why people always use CotS as a benchmark for DPS/AP costs when it's fed by LT's ridiculous AP acceleration, usually only requiring a couple more matches after the cascade

Because they just won't say they have no reason not use CotS if it's green. Surprised X-Force green went over so well and don't recall a CotS being brought up then.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

But really, I'm not sure why people always use CotS as a benchmark for DPS/AP costs when it's fed by LT's ridiculous AP acceleration, usually only requiring a couple more matches after the cascade

COTS is a great benchmark for 'barely balanced' though I don't think a skill should be considered inadequate just because it can't measure to COTS. The Thunder Strike does cost 12 yellow too, even though it does plenty of damage on its own, but shouldn't be thought of as completely free.

Spoit

I've been wanting a reverse-avoid for a while, but this really doesn't do anything for me. If they didn't want it as a passive, it would have been way more useful if it only cost 6 and had reduced, or even no damage reduction. Just like with cmag's new defensive move, 8AP is way too much for a purely defensive move that doesn't offer extra utility.

Spoit

Phantron wrote:

Spoit wrote:

But really, I'm not sure why people always use CotS as a benchmark for DPS/AP costs when it's fed by LT's ridiculous AP acceleration, usually only requiring a couple more matches after the cascade

COTS is a great benchmark for 'barely balanced' though I don't think a skill should be considered inadequate just because it can't measure to COTS. The Thunder Strike does cost 12 yellow too, even though it does plenty of damage on its own, but shouldn't be thought of as completely free.

Sure, but if you want to use a 14 AP AoE as a benchmark, we now have whales!

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

The game is never going to favor playing defensively until they get rid of characters with regen who have effectively way more HP than any alleged 'tank' character. Why use a guy with 10000 HP compared to 6800 + 400 turn guy who also has above average offense? On offense, the guy who can regen is almost certainly going to be able to withstand more damage. On defense, neither character will get attacked first, but the guy with regen has better offense, so he can at least contribute more.

I'm not saying anything about how good or bad Colossus is. I don't think I'm a good enough player for my opinion to matter in that regard. However, as far as Colossus being a defensive tank role, I think they did a good job on that. I can think of a couple situations where you might want to use Colossus instead of Patch. Are these scenarios common enough? I don't know. But here they are:

1) Incoming damage might kill Patch/Laken, but would not kill Colossus with his Yellow out. Like, ironically, TBTI.
2) You are forced to match tiles with your weakest character when you know that the AI is about to unleash a devastating ability. (Can't count all the times there was only one match on the board, and I had to match The Hood into a Prehistoric Bite...)

In those cases, if Colossus uses his Yellow ability, he could save the day. Again, I'm not saying Colossus is good, and I'm not saying that playing defensively is a good strategy. All I'm saying is, I think Colossus has a good defensive flavor, which seems to be what they were aiming for.

Unknown

Immovable Object needs to be way cheaper or the CD needs to do something when it expires. The simplest kind I can think of would be Peacemaker where you leave a protect tile of considerable strength behind. I'm sure there's more clever things you can do, but I think having a 300 strength protect tile for a CD that survived 5 turns is not asking much.

Unknown

AznLyte wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The game is never going to favor playing defensively until they get rid of characters with regen who have effectively way more HP than any alleged 'tank' character. Why use a guy with 10000 HP compared to 6800 + 400 turn guy who also has above average offense? On offense, the guy who can regen is almost certainly going to be able to withstand more damage. On defense, neither character will get attacked first, but the guy with regen has better offense, so he can at least contribute more.

I'm not saying anything about how good or bad Colossus is. I don't think I'm a good enough player for my opinion to matter in that regard. However, as far as Colossus being a defensive tank role, I think they did a good job on that. I can think of a couple situations where you might want to use Colossus instead of Patch. Are these scenarios common enough? I don't know. But here they are:

1) Incoming damage might kill Patch/Laken, but would not kill Colossus with his Yellow out. Like, ironically, TBTI.
2) You are forced to match tiles with your weakest character when you know that the AI is about to unleash a devastating ability. (Can't count all the times there was only one match on the board, and I had to match The Hood into a Prehistoric Bite...)

In those cases, if Colossus uses his Yellow ability, he could save the day. Again, I'm not saying Colossus is good, and I'm not saying that playing defensively is a good strategy. All I'm saying is, I think Colossus has a good defensive flavor, which seems to be what they were aiming for.

The concept is sound in theory, but in practice anyone who can regen like Daken or Patch will always tank far better. His move also costs a comparable amount to the moves you need to defend from, so it also won't be ready a lot of the time. Right now you just have Patch or Daken tank everything you reasonably can, and make sure they stay in front when a big move is coming as long as it does less than around 5000 damage you send them in front to take it and then just make sure they don't take another major move for a while. And if the other side had 2 5K range moves in short succession someone's probably going to die anyway and having Colossus likely won't change much unless you've Immovable Object at the exact right time. Keep in mind that Colossus should do significantly less damage than Daken or Patch, since if he does more damage than they do he'd be rather overpowered for having Thor level HPs and better offense for what is likely the lowest HP class of usable characters now, and we're talking about Patch and Daken here who are near the top of the offense pyramid. But if Colossus does less damage than Daken or Patch and generally tanks worse, why even use him? I mean they even said in their own notes way back that Wolverine is not supposed to tank as well as Colossus, long before this character existed! But it's just really hard for 10K HP to beat 6800 + 400/turn even in a single game, since in 10 turns the regen tank would've more effective HPs, and this gets way more in favor of the regen guys for multiple games.

Nonce Equitaur 2

I made a change.

Immovable Object - Yellow 8 AP
Colossus protects his team by standing in front of any force that comes their way. Turns a chosen basic Yellow tile into a 3 turn Countdown tile. While active, Colossus moves to the front at end of turn, and resists 25% of the damage dealt to him. If the team has 0 AP in all colors and no counters, the power can be cast for free.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Damage reduction up to 35% Level 3: Damage reduction up to 45% Level 4: Lasts 4 turns Level 5: Damage reduction up to 50%, lasts 5 turns

0 AP = free casting. This makes Colossus immediately useful at the start of a match, protecting the team during the initial rounds. It matches his comic persona of immediately armoring up when the team is caught flat-footed. It gives some time for the rest of his team to rally behind him. This would be a block against fast Sentry wins.

EDIT: Added "and no counters" to keep Colossus from marking up all yellow tiles.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Immovable Object needs to be way cheaper or the CD needs to do something when it expires. The simplest kind I can think of would be Peacemaker where you leave a protect tile of considerable strength behind. I'm sure there's more clever things you can do, but I think having a 300 strength protect tile for a CD that survived 5 turns is not asking much.

Once again Phantron with a good suggestion. But may I offer an addition? How about it returns AP also just like Peacemaker? At the reduced rate of course. But it would help nonetheless with keeping Colossus up front to tank and to cause damage to the enemy team.

Unknown

Dear D3. Please change fastball to any other colour so that I can abuse murderous aim and you will make dark avengers good again. At max fastball he can deal almost 10k to one target

Sandmaker

Phantron wrote:

The concept is sound in theory, but in practice anyone who can regen like Daken or Patch will always tank far better. His move also costs a comparable amount to the moves you need to defend from, so it also won't be ready a lot of the time. Right now you just have Patch or Daken tank everything you reasonably can, and make sure they stay in front when a big move is coming as long as it does less than around 5000 damage you send them in front to take it and then just make sure they don't take another major move for a while. And if the other side had 2 5K range moves in short succession someone's probably going to die anyway and having Colossus likely won't change much unless you've Immovable Object at the exact right time. Keep in mind that Colossus should do significantly less damage than Daken or Patch, since if he does more damage than they do he'd be rather overpowered for having Thor level HPs and better offense for what is likely the lowest HP class of usable characters now, and we're talking about Patch and Daken here who are near the top of the offense pyramid. But if Colossus does less damage than Daken or Patch and generally tanks worse, why even use him? I mean they even said in their own notes way back that Wolverine is not supposed to tank as well as Colossus, long before this character existed! But it's just really hard for 10K HP to beat 6800 + 400/turn even in a single game, since in 10 turns the regen tank would've more effective HPs, and this gets way more in favor of the regen guys for multiple games.

For the most part I agree with this. But I think there is a difference between high durability and the ability to tank. I agree that Daken and Patch are definitely more durable in the long game with their regen, but they can only actually tank their strongest colors. In many setups this is only 2-3 colors. For example if the other two on the team is Hood+HT, Patch would only tank green&purple, while Daken would only tank black&purple. This can drop down to 1 strong color if your featured character is high level.

Colossus is the first character with an actual tanking ability that forces himself into the front line to take damage, regardless of color, and regardless of the situation. Being able to tank a color that someone else on the team is strong in is an ability we've never played with before, and I feel shouldn't be discounted so easily.

Off the top of my head I can think of at least a few situation where I might find him more valuable. Particularly in pve where you're facing stuff like DevilDino + green feeding goon, or scaled abilities going off for 7k+.

Sandmaker

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

I made a change.

Immovable Object - Yellow 8 AP
Colossus protects his team by standing in front of any force that comes their way. Turns a chosen basic Yellow tile into a 3 turn Countdown tile. While active, Colossus moves to the front at end of turn, and resists 25% of the damage dealt to him. If the team has 0 AP in all colors, the power can be cast for free.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Damage reduction up to 35% Level 3: Damage reduction up to 45% Level 4: Lasts 4 turns Level 5: Damage reduction up to 50%, lasts 5 turns

0 AP = free casting. This makes Colossus immediately useful at the start of a match, protecting the team during the initial rounds. It matches his comic persona of immediately armoring up when the team is caught flat-footed. It gives some time for the rest of his team to rally behind him. This would be a block against fast Sentry wins.

This is by far the best idea I've seen. Addresses the speed problem, without running the danger of having too low of an AP cost and turning the ability into a full time 50% damage shield for your team. Also very in character and serve the role he's trying to fill.

Unknown

fsentell wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Immovable Object needs to be way cheaper or the CD needs to do something when it expires. The simplest kind I can think of would be Peacemaker where you leave a protect tile of considerable strength behind. I'm sure there's more clever things you can do, but I think having a 300 strength protect tile for a CD that survived 5 turns is not asking much.

Once again Phantron with a good suggestion. But may I offer an addition? How about it returns AP also just like Peacemaker? At the reduced rate of course. But it would help nonetheless with keeping Colossus up front to tank and to cause damage to the enemy team.

I don't want to get into a situation like Captain America where he's accidentally balanced because one of his skill is too good (red returns way too much AP) while the others do too little so ends up being sort of fair. In theory you could have something like cost 8y return 5y for how little Immovable Object does, but I suspect if you went that path there's going to be something I didn't think about that could be very broken so I'd rather not take chances. So I'd prefer just reducing the cost to the minimum allowed, 5 AP. Now this ability probably still does too little for 5 AP, but at least you can start there and see if it needs to have any additional side effect. Of course you can also increase the side effect to make it worth 8 AP. Whatever the side effect is, it should not do less than half of Battleplan since half of Battleplan would be quite underpowered.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

I made a change.

Immovable Object - Yellow 8 AP
Colossus protects his team by standing in front of any force that comes their way. Turns a chosen basic Yellow tile into a 3 turn Countdown tile. While active, Colossus moves to the front at end of turn, and resists 25% of the damage dealt to him. If the team has 0 AP in all colors, the power can be cast for free.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Damage reduction up to 35% Level 3: Damage reduction up to 45% Level 4: Lasts 4 turns Level 5: Damage reduction up to 50%, lasts 5 turns

0 AP = free casting. This makes Colossus immediately useful at the start of a match, protecting the team during the initial rounds. It matches his comic persona of immediately armoring up when the team is caught flat-footed. It gives some time for the rest of his team to rally behind him. This would be a block against fast Sentry wins.

If an ability is so weak that you can start with a free one at the beginning of every match, it needs to be fixed in some other way.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Phantron wrote:

If an ability is so weak that you can start with a free one at the beginning of every match, it needs to be fixed in some other way.

It is weakest at the beginning of a match when the teams should have no power. If you're limping in with an injured team behind colossus, he's giving them five turns. If OBW drains your team to nothing, its a new rallying point.

In the middle of a match, the skill should be paid for, and is well worth the cost. The team is still alive on turn five ... now its time to pay for it.

theshadeofopal

Too bad the 0 ap casting idea would break the unspoken rule of allowing a character to have efficient early defensive skills coupled with other non-garbage abilities.

Phaserhawk

Ohhhhh. I now see the big problem with this guy and why he'll suck. You'll never get red to go off for full power without yellow since yellow is his strongest tile color and not red . Please change tile strength to have red strongest or he's gonna suck. Unless you have him as your only red user that's the only way to get that 11th red and use it the following turn if you want max damage. Otherwise say you run him with Sentry or Torch. You have 8 red you do a match 3 so sentry or torch will be out front at end of turn. Meaning unless you also have 8 yellow or 13 black or you have all ready casted yellow otherwise you are going to have to hope there is a match with Colossus as the tile owner otherwise you won't be able to max cast it the following turn either. Please, please , please flip flop tile strength of red and yellow

Wolarsen

On flavour side, the character is great; on incoming characters discussion practically everybody was asking for a fastball.

The ideas are somehow fresh and fun... but sadly as fresh and fun as DD's traps! I like characters like that being around in the game, but as long as they use an expensive slot and can not really be used to score in events, it's not worth.

Phaserhawk

I'll ask Phantron to do the math. But what are the odds that Immoveable Object gets destroyed? I just noticed now that you get to place the tile, which significantly increases it's survival chance over random, due to being able to place it in a corner. Obviously defensively it will be random but just wondering on the offensive side what the odds are of it getting destroyed at 3, 4, and 5 CD?

In addition I think this will be a decent skill. It won't be the best at negating match damage, but as for skill damage that's huge. Imagine only taking 3500 damage from a full Thor rotation of Thunder Strike into Call of the Storm. I don't see him being much of a threat in high level PvP, even if he did get immoveable Oject off against you while playing Sentry, it only prevents his damage not everyone elses. He would be good at saving Health Packs in early PvP but thats about it. As for PvE thats a whole other story. This guy could really help grinding in PvE by blocking damage and taking reduced himself this would really save on Health Packs.

CrookedKnight

And don't forget that in the best case scenario he's Fastballing another character out of Call The Storm entirely. Sure that takes a bunch of black, but I think it might be worth fielding him alongside OBW for.