Level shift and Heroic Events

Unknown

So I was playing in heroic DA which really sucks, and I started thinking why. I have all the characters needed at a decent level and there's nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the enemy setup. Then it occurred to me that I can't really use any of my 2* because of level shift. Prior to level shift, a level 85 2* is closer to power to a level 141 3* than now (94 vs 166). 2*s get +40 levels from the minor buffs and a level 125 OBW was competitive against even pretty broken characters, but even if you go away from the broken, take someone fairly modest like Ares or even Moonstone and they can definitely compete against the level 141s as a 125 2*. The 3* gets +30 level on a minor buff and it's hard to tell if 171 3* beats a 125 2* but it's definitely close enough. This means in all the generic PvE events you can use your 2*s that are buffed, and in heroic events your level 85 characters like Thor/Wolverine/OBW can all pull their weight.

Well, after the level shift, this doesn't work anymore. If you have a level 166 character you're usually stuck using 3*s or have someone like OBW who makes a few matches and then immediately gets mauled by enemies that are scaled to your level 166 3*s. I don't know if it's a freak accident or a conspiracy, but we've been getting a very bad selection of 3 3*s for the recent heroic events. I'm not talking about bad as in your heroes are Doom Loki and Ragnarok and can't possibly beat anything. The heroes aren't necessary weak on the power level but the 3*s seems to be picked in a way that they have no possible synergy between themselves. The last event we had Thor (major) Falcon Hulk which features no usable special tile generator (2*s are not usable due to level shift), and Hulk can't tank any color besides black if Thor is present. In this event we got Psylocke (weak), HT (hard hitting but fragile), and IM40 (generally useless) and again you end up with a team that's pretty much just fighting on its own. We do have 2* Thor, who does cover this team's weakness pretty well, except he's not usable due to level shift as well, as Thor's role is to absorb damage but level shift means he cannot get red/green from a maxed HT so he'd only have one color (yellow).

Again this isn't just the 3*s we had are weak. I enjoyed the events with She-Hulk and Captain Marvel because even though they're probably not the greatest character to use, they've very good complimentary abilities to the team. She-Hulk is great board control and can remove special tiles even at a low level (though need 5 in blue to remove CDs). Captain Marvel can at least provide some AP when she got hit by a Flamethrower and Hypersonic Punch's one turn stun is surprisingly useful because of the prevalence of 1 villian + 2 goon matchups. While synergy isn't super important in this game, it feels pretty stupid when your 3*s have nothing to do with each other. IM40's AP generation ability is redundant compared to OBW, and he'd only have yellow over Psylocke so he can't tank either. Or you can just not run Psylocke except she's required in some nodes and in general heroic events aren't feasible doable without the major buffed character if you have a level 166.

Unknown

Uh oh, this isn't good. I agree with Phantron

Unknown

Jugg Heroic was Fat Thor gorging on health packs. In DA Heroic it's Psylocke's turn. She's looking a bit slim and could use an extra meal or forty anyways.

Unknown

The difference between Juggs and DA Heroic is Juggs had no subs. This one should be less of a health pack frenzy, hopefully. Oscorp Heroic and DA Heroic are generally better than Venom and Juggernaut. D3 should really go back and fix those other two with the use of sub events.

Unknown

gobstopper wrote:

Jugg Heroic was Fat Thor gorging on health packs. In DA Heroic it's Psylocke's turn. She's looking a bit slim and could use an extra meal or forty anyways.

I don't care too much about health pack drain conspiracy but I don't like losing a ton of health pack because my team doesn't make sense. The last event was literally just Thor going 1 on 3. This event is like Psylocke showing how to tank like a champ except she can't tank like a champ and your tank (IM40) can only have one color over her (yellow), or you can watch HT who is even worse at tanking gets tear apart if you don't want to see Psylocke getting smashed. After taking a couple too many Headbutt in the face I thought about putting a tank and then I noticed IM40 would only have one color over Psylocke and Thor would only have one color over HT. So even if I don't use Psylocke for some reason I'd need a team like HT/Thor/IM40 to provide any kind of protection for HT and that team would pretty much just HT going 1on3.

Sandmaker

I'm not sure I understand why it matters if the rosters "makes sense" or not. Every 3* player has to use the same nonsense roster. So the difficulty of using a ****, non-synergyzing team is just part of the "challenge" in these event. It's like when they stick an essential daredevil for an all goon node. It serves no purpose other than to make things stupid for you.

I'm not saying I particularly enjoy it, but I see the dev's logic: "Here's a bunch of characters that don't go particularly well together. Entertain your masters, my puppets!"

Unknown

My main issue is that heroic events just aren't any fun. At all. They're tedious, frustrating, slogs, and the fact that heroics have been the most frequently run PVEs lately is really causing my commitment to the game to waver. Dark Avengers isn't quite as bad as the others, since it has subs, but it still isn't fun at all. Heroics used to be rare events brought out to challenge people who wanted to try them. They've take to introducing every single character introduced after Deadpool in them, and it's taking one of the things I used to look forward to - new PVEs - and turning them into one of my least favorite parts of it. I hate them, and I'm not giving them any money as long as they keep introducing new characters in them.

Unknown

I agree that 2s should be buffed enough to be able to compete with your 3s Roster. After all as you said if enemies are scaled to my 166 Lthor, there is no way I can use a 134 Thor to fight them, even though he is buffed.

But I'd also like to point out that Mags + Storm were chewing through the gauntlet like its nothing. 50 Mags 94 Storm took down the lvl 300 Sentry Node for me.

So it depends who is buffed. Ares/Thor buffed are just meatshields you can use for maybe one fight. OBW/Storm/Mags and maybe Hawkeye are useful even if they are kind of underlevelled.

Heroic Events do suck. They are boring and a grind. I'm thinking the purposely use them for the new characters because they know people will grind for the new chars and they don't want people to burn out on the sweeter events. So they'd rather make us slog through the boring events and enjoy the original ones more.

Unknown

Heroics usually aren't quite this bad. The problem now is you have a completely horrible grouping against the cheapest of combos and the levels of the enemy are as high as regular pve rather that heroics where they are usually lower. I'm seeing lvl 200s in the first few hours of a 7 day event. I was hopeful as having basically all the useable characters maxed that it wouldn't be a HP fest or boost fest but apparently fun is being coded out of the events.

Grindy events really need to have enemy levels reduced a ton. It's understandable when you only have to do a node one time to have high levels. When you need to do the nodes a dozen or so times each, you have a major problem.

I know it says heroic blah blah blah but if you're going in with a limited roster and a intentionally terrible mix at that, there should atleast be a massive level reduction. Pve is fun when you get to try combos that you aren't allowed to use in pvp. Well this pve isn't fn because there's not a single combo worth a damn.

Future heroics need fixing as I'm sure this one is already lost

Unknown

I get that they don't want you to always use the same guys over and over but the selection for the heroic is too small. For one the heroic events are themed as 'good guys only', so you'd never have any of the DAs or just generally bad guys on the team. Then there's a selection of 8 or so heroes and it's supposed to be divided roughly into the 1/2/3*s. I've noticed a pretty consistent problem in that 1/2*s are relatively few in number and fairly simple and self-sustainable. Outside of Modern Black Widow I can't think of a 1/2* that is completely dependent on other characters (OBW does quite a bit of damage with Espionage even by herself). On the other hand let's look at the last 6 3*s in heroics:

Thor - No problem here.
Falcon - Useless without another special tile generator
Hulk - Useless if not able to tank
Psylocke - She's more of a low HP enemy finisher specialist and/or just plain weak.
HT - Hard hitting character with low HP that needs someone to cover his colors.
IM40 - He's probably obselete due to way too expensive moves.

Hulk and Falcon both require very special support to even be playable (and neither was present in the event). HT and Psylocke both really can use someone with a lot of HP to tank, which could've been filled by IM40 if not for the fact that IM40 gets only yellow over Psylocke due to the uneven level boosts. Since 3*s tends to be more specialized you can't just take 3 random good guys and call that a team. Prior to level shift you had the same setup but if the 3 guys don't make since you can throw in OBW/Wolverine/Thor who tend to fit very well in all kinds of teams, and Storm and now Hawkeye would be pretty good for more specialized role (damage/stun). Wolverine's Healing Factor, though pretty weak by True Healing standards, is still quite valuable in getting more mileage out of your characters. Thor 2* isn't quite as overpowered as his 3* counterpart but as long as he get his emblem he's still a good tank and brings good support abilities. OBW is OBW though she's more likely to survive as a 125 versus enemies scaled against 141 versus as a 134 against enemies scaled against 166.

If the 2* aren't going to be buffed up with higher level in heroics so that we a max roster person can use them, then we need more 3*s available in the selection. I'd also like to see the 'good guys only' restriction lifted. Sure you still can't use Daken against Daken but who cares if you can use guys who aren't supposed to be part of SHIELD in these events? My team in Prodigal Sun was Daken + Thor + CMag and I'm not even how this gathering of individuals would ever make sense in the story, and honestly Prodigal Sun would've been pretty dumb if you can only use DAs, given Sentry wasn't available yet and as powerful as Daken is, it'd definitely be very boring.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I don't know if it's a freak accident or a conspiracy, but we've been getting a very bad selection of 3 3*s for the recent heroic events.

My guess would be is they looked at what type of rosters were getting the two and three cover rewards in Heroic PvEs and decided it was too weighted to the 3* plus rosters. We know they want everyone to have an equal chance of wining and hence this is a way of trying to correct the imbalance instead of trying to rebalance the level scaling they are using.

Bowgentle

Sumilea wrote:

We know they want everyone to have an equal chance of wining

Except Europeans.

Unknown

Sandmaker wrote:

I'm not sure I understand why it matters if the rosters "makes sense" or not. Every 3* player has to use the same nonsense roster. So the difficulty of using a ****, non-synergyzing team is just part of the "challenge" in these event. It's like when they stick an essential daredevil for an all goon node. It serves no purpose other than to make things stupid for you.

I'm not saying I particularly enjoy it, but I see the dev's logic: "Here's a bunch of characters that don't go particularly well together. Entertain your masters, my puppets!"

Well you can understand that it's not the same. If the scaling of the enemies is calculated including your roster and your character levels, then you are screwed for having a better roster instead of having an advantage.

Unknown

Sumilea wrote:

Phantron wrote:

I don't know if it's a freak accident or a conspiracy, but we've been getting a very bad selection of 3 3*s for the recent heroic events.

My guess would be is they looked at what type of rosters were getting the two and three cover rewards in Heroic PvEs and decided it was too weighted to the 3* plus rosters. We know they want everyone to have an equal chance of wining and hence this is a way of trying to correct the imbalance instead of trying to rebalance the level scaling they are using.

Beyond that players with the best characters should do the best, that doesn't mean you purposely pick a bunch of 3*s that are very bad to play when level shift makes it impossible to go back to using 2* in any meaningful capacity. Besides if you don't want people with strong characters to win then you should never have characters like Thor or Patch major boosted. Yes Thor was pretty much just 1on3 but he's still likely to do better than any 2* could even while going 1on3 after community scaling starts kicking in. It's just really boring going 1on3 on every fight because every other 3* on the available list is useless.

dkffiv

Another huge problem is the 2* roster has pretty good synergy. Thor / OBW/ Hawkeye cover Red/Green/Blue/Purple/Yellow and Thor's Green has a high probability of proccing Hawkeye's passive. Anyone with a 166 can't use this combo because we've already been scaled out of that range within the first 5 hours.

Its also really stupid that the level shift is additive and not multiplicative. I've got a covered but unleveled second OBW and she's pulling her weight with the level bump. Make it 1* level x5, 2* level x2, 3* level x1.3333 and featured 3* level x1.5. Give me some events where I can use my old 1*'s/2*'s and make people reluctant to sell their old characters lest they get the shaft in a PvE (especially one with a new hero release). Maybe you can sell more roster slots that way too.

With the additive model there is less incentive to level characters. Assuming a character is good enough to get the job done, a lower leveled character heals faster than a maxed for a minor bump in damage. I would also recommend revamping the level up model. A large amount of levels should be available for your first few covers and the last few should offer the smallest level delta. Its insulting that you can only gain 5 levels for a 3 covered hero. For this I would recommend 15 levels for the first cover, 12 for the second, 10 for the third, 4 for each additional with 3 for the final cover. A new player would be able to take a 2/2/2 3* to level 121 - that would be competitive against 2*'s.