Nerfing: is it a good thing?!

MarcusGraves

I honestly don't see much wrong with the numbers in sentry's kit that warrant a nerf for him since him and the team have to also take damage for his powers. the real problem seems to revolve around the mechanics for multiple countdown tiles that go off at the same time getting a boost from strike tiles for each one.

so before sentry even gets looked at for any possible changes they need to first give countdown tiles the attack tile treatment where you only get one use from strike tiles when they go off, this really should of been done already and be pretty obvious to change first. it would be really hard for demiurge to F up majorly and completely ignore doing this one simple change first to see where the character is after and THEN maybe do some number tweaking.

but i'm talking about a company that took more than 6 months to re-balance a well known and abused character (C.mags) and still haven't finished adding a 3rd power to 3 star characters that really need them (rag, loki and doom).

Unknown

In Sentry.'s current form, he is clearly broken. If his green goes off with his yellow strike tile out, it is an immediate win against almost all teams. The problem is that this can be done in first 2-3 turns of a match if boosted. This trivializes hard fights. With +6ap to yellow And green, I have many wins by third turn. If a turn 3 win doesn't happen, I can usually win by turn 5. This is helped by hood mechanics that speed up my ap gain and finish all cool downs. The fact that sentry does self damage isn't a large enough penalty for instant win games. Other characters (like GSBW) with less damaging powers take far longer to get going.

Thor had same issue last year. His makeover went pretty well. He is a core part of a huge number of teams. Pick thought the spidey change was botched and needs a reimagining. However, I think magneto and Xforce changes went well. Recognizing change is needed doesn't mean destroying a character.

NorthernPolarity

MarcusGraves wrote:

I honestly don't see much wrong with the numbers in sentry's kit that warrant a nerf for him since him and the team have to also take damage for his powers. the real problem seems to revolve around the mechanics for multiple countdown tiles that go off at the same time getting a boost from strike tiles for each one.

so before sentry even gets looked at for any possible changes they need to first give countdown tiles the attack tile treatment where you only get one use from strike tiles when they go off, this really should of been done already and be pretty obvious to change first. it would be really hard for demiurge to F up majorly and completely ignore doing this one simple change first to see where the character is after and THEN maybe do some number tweaking.

but i'm talking about a company that took more than 6 months to re-balance a well known and abused character (C.mags) and still haven't finished adding a 3rd power to 3 star characters that really need them (rag, loki and doom).

It's not as easy as you think. The problem is that if they change it to make it so that you only get 1 stack of strike tiles for all the countdown tiles, then Sentry's green will now do essentially its base damage, which is a huge nerf considering this would change it to 7 ap for roughly 1.4k damage to the enemy team + damage to your own team and all that: sacrifice tiles would boost this to ~2k damage at best. Can you imagine the amount of backlash that people would give if this happened? You would hear hordes of people complain on the forums "zomg, sentry takes so much self inflicted damage, and all I get is 2k damage to the enemy team? This was completely unwarranted, d3 is cash grabbing" so on and so forth. There's probably a better way to perform this nerf: I was thinking of starting with something more along the lines of WR costing 12AP, and removing the 4 corner CD tiles from the ability. This takes away a lot of the speed of the ability, and makes it less likely for you to have cd tiles up when you WR.

MarcusGraves

NorthernPolarity wrote:

It's not as easy as you think. The problem is that if they change it to make it so that you only get 1 stack of strike tiles for all the countdown tiles, then Sentry's green will now do essentially its base damage, which is a huge nerf considering this would change it to 7 ap for roughly 1.4k damage to the enemy team + damage to your own team and all that: sacrifice tiles would boost this to ~2k damage at best. Can you imagine the amount of backlash that people would give if this happened? You would hear hordes of people complain on the forums "zomg, sentry takes so much self inflicted damage, and all I get is 2k damage to the enemy team? This was completely unwarranted, d3 is cash grabbing" so on and so forth. There's probably a better way to perform this nerf: I was thinking of starting with something more along the lines of WR costing 12AP, and removing the 4 corner CD tiles from the ability. This takes away a lot of the speed of the ability, and makes it less likely for you to have cd tiles up when you WR.

are we talking 7 AP for an average of 1.4K due to the possibility of accidental CD tile pops? im looking at the posted character stats and see 2368 damage for a maxed out world rupture when all tiles go off. 7 AP to do 2369 damage to the whole team is nothing to sneeze at, only other character with such a cheap team damage ability is punisher but it only does 783 for 7 AP.

there really is only one of two things that will happen because we all know sentry is on the radar, either they will change the mechanics of CD tiles interacting with strike tiles or they will leave it as is the gut the hell out of world rupture.

don't get me wrong, I understand your concerns of community backlash over something since most of us remember the rag red change and sheer rage that followed to the point where you could taste the bloodlust in the air towards the devs. if a change does come though it will be a lesser of two evils deal, will you want a mechanic change to tone down the power abuse or will you take a straight nerfing to the power's actual numbers?

Kelbris

BozKoh wrote:

Can Ragnarok counter Sentry = I think yes too
:P

Do you remember Patch Mags?

Imagine that, except Mags red does 600 damage pre-cascade and instead of destroying five tiles, GENERATES FIVE GREEN.

Did you even **** use broken Ragnarok? I would only use Rags/Patch/Daken and I would beat you in a minute with you using ANYONE.

You could use three sentries and I would still run through you like a loose hooker.

Use TWELVE sentries. The fight still won't go past turn 3

Unknown

Okok chill. At least I saw some different combo characters hightlighted without Sentry haha. Nah I just don't like it when Sentry getting nerfed cause I'm building another Sentry. Since now the topic concentrating to change Sentry's skills then I'll just hold lol.

Unknown

Oh my god I don't know why people complain so much? Leave the game as it is, I can beat sentry, oaken, and hood l166 with im40, lazy Thor, and HT. I've done it before it's not imposible.

Leave the game as it is!!!!

Adapt and conquer

FierceKiwi

Teno1 wrote:

Oh my god I don't know why people complain so much? Leave the game as it is, I can beat sentry, oaken, and hood l166 with im40, lazy Thor, and HT. I've done it before it's not imposible.

Leave the game as it is!!!!

Adapt and conquer

Beating Sentry isn't the issue it's pretty easy since the AI is still awful. The issue is Sentry basically = automatic 30 second win on offense. The same way everyone could beat Patchneto but Patchneto was nearly impossible to lose with on offense.

Unknown

FierceKiwi wrote:

Teno1 wrote:

Oh my god I don't know why people complain so much? Leave the game as it is, I can beat sentry, oaken, and hood l166 with im40, lazy Thor, and HT. I've done it before it's not imposible.

Leave the game as it is!!!!

Adapt and conquer

Beating Sentry isn't the issue it's pretty easy since the AI is still awful. The issue is Sentry basically = automatic 30 second win on offense. The same way everyone could beat Patchneto but Patchneto was nearly impossible to lose with on offense.

So what!?

People probably paid to have sentry and patch and mags leveled up and now the money they spent was just money in the trash for them.

Accept that people will have a better team and get the better rewards than you or you pay for those covers or leave the game if it's too hard for you.

Time complain, bracket complain, roster complain, AI complain complain complain is all I read.

Grow up people deal with it!!!

Sandmaker

Teno1 wrote:

Oh my god I don't know why people complain so much? Leave the game as it is, I can beat sentry, oaken, and hood l166 with im40, lazy Thor, and HT. I've done it before it's not imposible.

Leave the game as it is!!!!

Adapt and conquer

It's not about beating him....nobody is complaining about winning against him. It's about competing against him.

Can you win 3 matches in 3 minutes with im40, Lthor HT? No? Then you just forfeited 1st in your pvp bracket against anyone that owns a max sentry.

Unknown

Yes I can, even four or five. I can get up to 500 points with out health packs,

Unknown

It is good when its obvious that the thing being nerfed is too strong.

I can say, from experience in playing in other competitive games, that power creep is the worst thing a game can ever experience.

And if they tried the "buff the weaker ones" strategy that everyone is so in love with, the game would spiral out of control very quickly.

You remove the outlier, not try to raise the average up to the outlier's level.

Unknown

It is good when its obvious that the thing being nerfed is too strong.

I can say, from experience in playing in other competitive games, that power creep is the worst thing a game can ever experience.

And if they tried the "buff the weaker ones" strategy that everyone is so in love with, the game would spiral out of control very quickly.

You remove the outlier, not try to raise the average up to the outlier's level.

FierceKiwi

Teno1 wrote:

FierceKiwi wrote:

Beating Sentry isn't the issue it's pretty easy since the AI is still awful. The issue is Sentry basically = automatic 30 second win on offense. The same way everyone could beat Patchneto but Patchneto was nearly impossible to lose with on offense.

So what!?

People probably paid to have sentry and patch and mags leveled up and now the money they spent was just money in the trash for them.

Accept that people will have a better team and get the better rewards than you or you pay for those covers or leave the game if it's too hard for you.

Time complain, bracket complain, roster complain, AI complain complain complain is all I read.

Grow up people deal with it!!!

Depending on when they paid money on Mags/Patch they got potentially months of competative advantage for their money...likely they'll get months of advantage out of Sentry too. The money is no more wasted than any other F2P game that obsoletes characters every month through power creep. Frankly they can leave Sentry as an uber-beast if they want since he only really breaks PvP and I wasn't going to win those anyway (they should still address the issue even if it won't help/hurt me). I abused Mags for months but I'm not really upset that he's nerfed he was obviously overpowered and I knew from the start his days were numbered.

Spoit

Kelbris wrote:

BozKoh wrote:

Can Ragnarok counter Sentry = I think yes too

Do you remember Patch Mags?

Imagine that, except Mags red does 600 damage pre-cascade and instead of destroying five tiles, GENERATES FIVE GREEN.

Did you even tinykitty use broken Ragnarok? I would only use Rags/Patch/Daken and I would beat you in a minute with you using ANYONE.

You could use three sentries and I would still run through you like a loose hooker.

Use TWELVE sentries. The fight still won't go past turn 3

Of course, turn 3 could be a good 5 minutes in at that rate, if you were relying on godlike power as your green dump

_RiO_

Teno1 wrote:

Yes I can, even four or five. I can get up to 500 points with out health packs,

That says absolutely nothing about your ability to 'speed kill'.

Sentry is broken because, when played well and backed by lots of cash, his time-to-kill is faster than anything else in the game. While you're busy playing your match, a player using Sentry speed killing will have finished upwards of 3. While you're gaining 10 points, they're gaining 30 points. Let's pull shield hopping into the equation; Sentry kills fast enough to run a lot more lined up matches each hop. So in effect, the exploitative nature lowers the shield hopping cost as well and in turn makes shield hopping more exploitable as well. (Or it trades off some of the cost on boosting/healing your team, that's a matter of perspective.)

Sentry is an all-round P2W express-elevator to the top of the rankings.

Unknown

I feel as if people who complain about characters being nerfed have never played other games where characters are subject to balance changes.

The CMags nerf was needed as for one, he made PvE too ridiculously easy and contributed to some of the higher scaling. In PvP, he made having 1-turn wins possible. Get blue off and start the infinite turn cycle. It provides too much of an advantage.

simonsez

Chaotic Ryu wrote:

The CMags nerf was needed as for one, he made PvE too ridiculously easy and contributed to some of the higher scaling.

I haven't seen scaling be any friendlier in the two PvEs since the nerf. The only difference now is that the nodes are either unplayable, or require max boosting and/or health packs. Now that they've supposedly restored balance via these nerfs, it would be great if the game would stop punishing past success. There's no reason why my nodes should be 50 levels higher than someone with an equivalent roster.

Unknown

_RiO_ wrote:

Teno1 wrote:

Yes I can, even four or five. I can get up to 500 points with out health packs,

That says absolutely nothing about your ability to 'speed kill'.

Sentry is broken because, when played well and backed by lots of cash, his time-to-kill is faster than anything else in the game. While you're busy playing your match, a player using Sentry speed killing will have finished upwards of 3. While you're gaining 10 points, they're gaining 30 points. Let's pull shield hopping into the equation; Sentry kills fast enough to run a lot more lined up matches each hop. So in effect, the exploitative nature lowers the shield hopping cost as well and in turn makes shield hopping more exploitable as well. (Or it trades off some of the cost on boosting/healing your team, that's a matter of perspective.)

Sentry is an all-round P2W express-elevator to the top of the rankings.

People will always complain when they can't overcome. There will always be someone better than you it's a sad reality.

So the best solution for this problem is to make every character have the same freaking power and the same freaking health, that way all the characters will be "balanced". My mags and sentry are not fully covered I was hoping to end up in first place on a pvp after I could get them covered but thanks to people like you now I have to level another character and the time and effort spent on mags was just time wasted.

Unknown

I think that Teno actually hit the nail right on the head. Sure there are going to be changes that we do not agree with as players (or change that we would like to see be made) but that does not necessarily mean that you cannot work around it.