*** Doctor Octopus (Otto Octavius) ***

Unknown

Illusions is way undercosted for what it does. It works out in Loki's case because he has a level deficit, The Hood's level of base HP, and he basically has only one ability, and even then Illusions can do some really crazy stuff occasionally.

over_clocked

Phantron wrote:

Illusions is way undercosted for what it does. It works out in Loki's case because he has a level deficit, The Hood's level of base HP, and he basically has only one ability, and even then Illusions can do some really crazy stuff occasionally.

Loki belongs to Black Widow health class, higher than Hood. If he would cap at 166, he would have 5950.

Unknown

locked wrote:

Phantron wrote:

Illusions is way undercosted for what it does. It works out in Loki's case because he has a level deficit, The Hood's level of base HP, and he basically has only one ability, and even then Illusions can do some really crazy stuff occasionally.

Loki belongs to Black Widow health class, higher than Hood. If he would cap at 166, he would have 5950.

I checked Colo's roster and you're right. I guess the fact that he's always 20 or so levels lower than a normal 3* made me think he's an even lower HP class than he is.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Seed teams are weak and therefore the doc ock you are playing against has few blue covers and affects very few special tiles. When you start hitting doc ocks with more covers (he is still really new) when you are using say Daken, Blade, Psylocke, A Wolvie, etc., he will be a little more effective. When you have to play a scaled version of him in PVE (which is where he'll be the most dangerous with goons feeding him blue and green ap), I'm pretty sure your opinion of him might change slightly;)

This is unlikely, as my opinion of him is "He is terrible at PvP" which will remain true.

If the speculation is true, and he is intentionally designed as being weak because he's a villian and will therefore be in PvE to battle against and at 395 he is somehow "balanced" then that is a terrible terrible design. A character that no one can really use at 166 because he's balanced to be ebil? Just... no.

Against certain parties he isn't TERRIBLE, but he isn't as good as straight damage either. To be considered "good" with a specialized ability (let alone 3) you need to blow your specialization out of the park. Maybe swapping 25% of the special tiles on the board for damage is no where near as good as just deploying Patch/Daken and destroying the enemy quickly.

Unknown

Special tile removal is a premium cost ability in this game, and it should be because otherwise why even invest in special tiles if everyone can remove it for 5 blue AP like back in the Magnetic Field days? Why use Manipulation over Peacemaker or Redwing? Because Captain America and Falcon have their own problems too. Comparing to Loki is pointless because Loki is just a character they sort of forgot about and Illusions is way undercosted for what it can do, but that's okay because Trickery is quite overcosted so it sort of balances out.

Now overall there's a rather significant advantage of characters who really don't rely on special tiles versus those who do, including Sentry (World Rupture puts way too many special tiles to be destroyed effectively even the best special tile removers), but those are the problematic 'same 5 guys' you see in PvP and it's not like people don't know those guys are way overpowered compared to everyone else.

Unknown

On the one hand you say special tile removal has to cost a premium, then on the other you say 11 Black for Loki to do it costs too much? That ability has 100% saturation too (of a limited selection of specials). So which is it? Do special tiles deserve special treatment, or is 11 AP too much for an ability that is situational in it's usefulness?

I don't care than Manipulation costs 11 . I really don't. Game changing abilities get to cost 11. I care that it's effectiveness is about 25% of what it should be. If it selected special tiles and swapped them with basic tiles, so any amount under 8 tiles is destroyed 100% then it would be a worthy ability. Either that or cut it's cost to 6 , so for 12 you can cast it twice and get closer to 40% dead specials.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

On the one hand you say special tile removal has to cost a premium, then on the other you say 11 Black for Loki to do it costs too much? That ability has 100% saturation too (of a limited selection of specials). So which is it? Do special tiles deserve special treatment, or is 11 AP too much for an ability that is situational in it's usefulness?

I don't care than Manipulation costs 11 . I really don't. Game changing abilities get to cost 11. I care that it's effectiveness is about 25% of what it should be. If it selected special tiles and swapped them with basic tiles, so any amount under 8 tiles is destroyed 100% then it would be a worthy ability. Either that or cut it's cost to 6 , so for 12 you can cast it twice and get closer to 40% dead specials.

Trickery only gets rid of strike/protect tiles. Being able to get rid of CDs always cost a lot, even if CDs aren't really that much more powerful but this is a very obvious design built into the game. Almost everything that gets rid of special tiles can only get rid of countdowns at the highest level.

I don't even think it was even intended for 4 match abilities to be game changing because they posted on the notes somewhere that they originally thought Ballistic Salvo was worth saving up for and that's 7 matches. The game design is fairly inconsistent with the philosophy behind abilities but that doesn't mean the the underyling idea is bad. It shouldn't be easy to get rid of special tiles, which are weak enough as is. Do people really think this game is really balanced? Why are people always surprised that a normal character can't match up with guys that can kill you in 3 turns? Even with examples like Classic Magneto, Wolverine 2*, Thor 2*, and Spiderman people still seem inexplicably surprised to find that some characters are way stronger than others and always demand everyone to made as insane as the current broken batch. It's counterproductive for balance and even if you don't care about balance, you can just use Sentry or whoever is currently overpowered so there's no need to ruin the game any further.

Unknown

The recent Q&A showed they have had a rethink of that thought. When IM40 was designed 20 was considered high cost 1 time game changing ability cost. Now it's closer to 12.

Also, they don't all have to be Sentry. They do all have to be at least as good as 3* Captain America, who is widely considered either the low end of good or the high end of Class B. It's like the height ruler next to a roller coaster. If you are not at least this good at PvP, we will not see you on our rosters unless required.

Beast is another prime example of failure to clear the bar. He is terrible at everything, at least Doc Ock is marginally good at PvE.

To contrast their recent character failures, lets look at some successes. Thor (Goddess of Thudner) and Blade can easily be considred Class A heroes. With the right team they will devastate the enemy. Blade/Daken/Any RYG user means 100% ability coverage with no overlap and 2 sources of free strike tiles to feed to Daken's Chemical Reaction. Very good under any circumstances, excellent when part of the team is buffed. Thor brings us a high level blue stun, capable of stun locking one enemy thanks to Charge Tiles. Also her Red will clobber any opponent of any health if used after a Blue. Are either as good as Sentry/Hood/X? No. Will I use them when I am bored of Sentry/Hood/X or while climbing to 900 points? Yes.

Unknown

Captain America is a very strong character and his limited usage is more like an accident from game design (very difficult to get the AI to use a 11 red AP ability because there are so many characters with a cheaper one), and I don't think Captain America should be a model of balance because he's quite overpowered on offense but the AI plays him bad enough that he ends up being balanced.

There's not much point to talk about 4*s because they're by design meant to be stronger than the 3*s. If they are not, why would anyone put the resources into building one? Blade has AP steal, which is one of the most overpowered type of ability in the game, but even then I don't think he's going to be as strong as people think he will be so I don't think that's a good baseline. A character I'd consider a model for balance would be Human Torch. His ability don't do anything complicated (straight up damage), so it's easy to measure as a number, but they all have unique criterias that can improve/hinder the ability. If you got a Manipulation versus Inferno, which can easily cost 20+ AP total depending on what your current AP pool looks like, being able to undo 25% of Inferno's damage for 11 blue and sneak in some damage is not an unreasonable tradeoff against an ability that will likely cost close to 20 total AP. Unlike say, Ballistic Salvo, Inferno is a usable ability even at its high cost since it's spread into 4 colors, so I'm not comparing Manipulation to something nobody would ever use in the first place. In this case, coming out behind versus Inferno seems reasonable because Inferno is considerably more costly than Manipulation. You can also come way ahead or way behind depending on your luck.

I think the game's balance is really out of whack when 'as strong as Captain America' is viewed as balanced. Captain America's red hits like a normal red ability even if you throw it directly into a red match 3 (4K damage for 8r, which is roughly the ratio of X Force as well) and yet it refunds all but 1 AP in a rather trivial condition. It just happens that the game is imbalanced enough that even he doesn't look too powerful compared to the even more broken characters. He's routinely my second best PvE character (there's usually someone who is better than him depending on the era) and he's likely the #1 overall damage contributor for all the high level PvE fights.

Unknown

I've got a 5/4/3 Doc Ock at 153, and against anyone who plasters the board with special tiles, his black is just death. You can cover the board with attack tiles pretty quickly, and that's just at four covers.

His green is kinda ok in certain situations - the stun is good, and the CD tile removal helps. His blue is probably useless unless it's your only blue. I"m starting to consider respeccing to 3/5/5.

Daeft

Speaking to the Loki comments, I'm pretty sure they said they have removed him along with the other 2 cover characters from cover packs so that they could redesign/release them at some unknown "when it's ready" time in the future. They were made with a lower level cap because they thought it would be more fun and bring in more diversity. They have since learned a lot about how to design characters and that is why we no longer see things like super low abilitiy costs or 2 cover characters.

Unknown

Daeft wrote:

Speaking to the Loki comments, I'm pretty sure they said they have removed him along with the other 2 cover characters from cover packs so that they could redesign/release them at some unknown "when it's ready" time in the future. They were made with a lower level cap because they thought it would be more fun and bring in more diversity. They have since learned a lot about how to design characters and that is why we no longer see things like super low abilitiy costs or 2 cover characters.

Nope.

Unknown

Rock Paper Scissors is the pinnacle of game balance. You win exactly 50% of the time from a probability standpoint, ignoring the ties. In it every "character" is equally strong to every other. This is the balance all games should strive for. Ignoring this is saying, "well we know these characters suck and no one uses them but we don't care." I don't believe D3 doesn't care.

It's ok for Doc Ock to be Paper (Special Tile Removal). But he has to actually beat Rock (Special Tile User) and he doesn't. You want to build a character around special tile, ALL special tile no special treatment for Countdowns, then build a character around it. But he needs to be able to tear Special Tile users like Daken and Sentry a new one to be considered anywhere near balanced and useable. Otherwise he is a gimmick, and gimmicks suck.

Inferno does not cost 20. It costs 10. Also it doesn't drain Green or Red, and depending on your team makeup it can drain colors you don't care about. If you do care about Blue, Purple, or Yellow use those abilities first. I'm willing to give you maybe a 2 AP drain on each for 16, but the ability requires only 10 AP to use so it's balanced as a 10 AP ability. And it's not even that good compared to his other 2 abilities.

For 11 AP I expect to defeat your 10 AP, similar to how Loki's 11 AP defeat's Patch's 9 AP. There are 8 special tiles max for inferno. I feel Manipulation would be justified in destroying all of them at 11 AP. At 6 AP I'd take 25% of them, and then match 1 or 2 of them for attack tiles. As it stands Manipulation is just too costly to be effective, and as Doc Ock's main attack power it makes him too costly to be effective. You bring him for his Black, period.

Setting a bar for PvP entry on a team isn't only practical, it's logical. Why would you handicap yourself using inferior characters if you had a choice? You wouldn't. So to be useful to PvP you have to be at least top of the B Team in ranking. If you isn't, you don't get to play. End of story. To this end, characters that don't clear the bar are not "balanced". They either need to LOWER the bar by tweaking all the upper characters down, raise the low end characters to bar height, or admit that certain characters blow hard at PvP and stop making us play them as featured.

Note: HT passes the PvP bar test. He is good enough to ride the ride. He is at least as good as Cap on offense.

yogi_

Just played against him again in some Gaunlet - where Blue actually had some covers and levels.

Had it trigger 3 or 4 times in a match (with special tiles on the board) and it did nothing a couple of times and some very low amount of damage a couple of other times.

Back to the drawing board.

Kinda makes me think that maybe the devs are trying too hard with some of these characters and their random ability tiles and the ever increasing combinations of this and that. Maybe it's time to step back and simplify things a little.

Unknown

Sound off on why you don't use this "utility" character nightmare.

***
Edited to add final poll results.

Item - Votes - % of Total Votes
His greasy slick hair cut - 7 - 11%
His rain poncho - 3 - 5%
The fact that his animations last until next Christmas - 8 - 12%
His idea of 'Call the Storm' is attempting to phone Ororo and causing 50 AoE damage to each enemy in return - 21 - 32%
His sunglasses have no frames - 2 - 3%
He is secretly a 1* character in 3* disguise - 25 - 38%

Unknown

That "call the storm" option made me laugh so hard

over_clocked

All his abilities are way too niche. Special tiles are NOT that powerful, period, and for the one character that has OP special tiles (Sentry), Octopus is way too expensive to even be considered a counter. He needs a redesign badly, don't think AP cost drop would help at all. That blue has a very high chance of doing a big beautiful fat nothing, that black is usable against who exactly, Daken? And then Ock needs strike tikes of his own to combo with attack tiles. That green is just a sad Frankenstein's monster of skills meshed together, begging to kill it with fire and end its suffering.
He doesn't even have a nifty 4,5 crit multiplier for that low, low health of his (6800 is the new low unless the character regens or has some truly unique abilities like cMagneto, for example).

simonsez

First time I ever wanted to downvote a poll...

The short answer: I don't use him because he's underleveled because there have been much better places to spend ISO. If I had him at lv166, I'd use him against goons, nothing else.

dkffiv

If he was a forced character in a heroic I might have some fun in him but he doesn't deserve to be anywhere near a PvP team.

His attack tiles either need a 10x damage bump, be changed to strike and/or protect tiles, or reduce all healing received by the other team by (50 or 100%) while active. His blue should be changed to purple with perhaps a minor AP reduction, his passive should be green and his other active should be black.

ScrubJay

He's supposed to be an anti-goon specialist but his blue power doesn't even work on countdown tiles until you have 5 covers. Until then he's just taking up roster space.