Character Rotations For Season X (Dr. Doom Returns!)

ronin_san

Rotating Out: Beast, Doctor Octopus, She-Hulk, Colossus.

They've mentioned, 2x, that Beast and possibly She-Hulk need a second look. I think it's fair that Doc Ock should get a bit of a tune-up, too. If this means Beast goes Marshawn ****, then cool. He deserves to be good.

yogi_

3* Characters eligible for rotation out for Season 11 (all 3* characters minus already out minus returned).
Blade
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Deadpool
Falcon
Gamora
Hood
Hulk
Luke Cage
Mystique
Rocket and Groot
Sentry
Spider-Man
Storm

Let's exclude the very newest characters... so most eligible for season 11 rotation out:
Captain America
Captain Marvel
Deadpool
Falcon
Hood*
Hulk
Sentry*
Spider-Man
Storm

* Recently balanced, but could still theoretically be rotated out.

h4n1s

At least PunPun is back and Dr. Doom looks nice.

Quebbster

Huh, Colossus? That was unexpected... I still need covers for him.
Villain lightning rounds will be interesting with more DOOM though.

Unknown

I actually use SheHulk quite a bit mainly for her red, she would be more useful if her blue only targeted enemy tiles or user selected tiles and her green healed 1000+ or so each ally.

IlDuderino

Please take out Falcon and 3* Cap at some point, every other 3* I draw is one of them. There have been SO many chances to win them over others too

Also Colossus has barely been out long enough to get him fully covered, I have one red cover!! Hoping he is not out too long

Unknown

I agree with bringing back Classic magneto.
I have 1 cover in him. Since I started 100 days ago.
also:
One in Punisher,
One in Human torch, (pleased they're back)
Would love some more in Black Panther & Daken, too.

I CAN justify spending $$$ on buying extra covers for a character.
but I need the starting cover first - your rules, not mine.
Anyway, thanks for being back the vaulted characters that you have.
But you're never going to please everyone.

Unknown

All 4 characters that are being rotated out need reworks of some kind.

Beast:
You need to make his blue actually do something. Craft it similar to R&G’s blue. Let me place the tile and then make them distribute across the board. Making 4 special tiles within a 9 tile area is just begging them to be matched away immediately if there is even 1 or 2 blue tiles near the area.

His green has trouble because it requires blue to be active in order for his green to be worth even half the green AP you’re spending. Honestly, even if they buffed this ability, is this really where you want your green AP going? There are so many superior abilities in the green range, you’d be crazy to base a team around this ability. I’d suggest switching it to either purple or maybe yellow, to increase its value to a team composition.

Speaking of his yellow…ugh. Just replace it. There is no point in having low impact non-true healing. 1100 health is pointless in the 3 star range. OBW’s heal gives me health at 3 covers and that’s a 2 star ability…and cheaper…with an AP stealing device.

Doc Oct:
You really need to just start from scratch here. Yes, he has a niche as a special tile remover. But his blue costs at least 3 AP more than it should for what it provides, given it’s a worse Loki purple if there are no or very few special tiles on the board. His black is decent, but it isn’t game changing and, again, it relies on many many special tiles. If there are only 3 or 4 special tiles on the board (like Captain America would do), there is very little use for this ability. Finally, his green…overpriced, low impact, valuable AP color and does too many small things to be considered worthwhile except in extraordinarily rare scenarios.

She-hulk:
Her red is solid. Her blue has some uses, like removing CD tiles or converting patch’s strike tiles etc. But her green is one of the worst in the game. Like the above 2, it is in a high value AP color and it does pretty much nothing. I mean, yes, you get a small boost in healing (less than 1000 at max level) and you have a chance to reduce a color that they need. But it has too much variability and it may even be buggy. I’ve had it cast on me before and not notice any loss in AP in any of my ability colors.

Colossus:
Looks good on paper, but then you realize that in order to use his red effectively, you either have to make a match of his the turn prior, cast one of his abilities prior to using his red or already have his yellow active before casting his red. Making him one of these awkward combo reliant characters, like Beast. And on defense, his red is easily circumvented just by seeing he has accumulated 11 red and moving to one of his teammates for 1 turn (unless he cast yellow). Then, his black seems great. You can cast it and protect one character while simultaneously casting one of their abilities for free plus the additional damage. But then you realize it costs 13 black AP…Black is one of the strongest colors in the game. For the same (or lower) price, you can cast surgical strike, Rage of the Panther, Nightstalker, Summon Demons, or Masterstroke. Also, the vast majority of strong abilities cost less than 13 AP. So, you have a situation where farming for this ability, one that gives you roughly 33% chance to cast the desired ability, actually takes longer than just farming the ability that you actually want to cast. So the only real purpose of this ability is if you have a board covered in black tiles, such that you cascade 13 AP unintentionally. And what is the point of relying on that scenario?

Phaserhawk

onimus wrote:

All 4 characters that are being rotated out need reworks of some kind.

Beast:
You need to make his blue actually do something. Craft it similar to R&G’s blue. Let me place the tile and then make them distribute across the board. Making 4 special tiles within a 9 tile area is just begging them to be matched away immediately if there is even 1 or 2 blue tiles near the area.

His green has trouble because it requires blue to be active in order for his green to be worth even half the green AP you’re spending. Honestly, even if they buffed this ability, is this really where you want your green AP going? There are so many superior abilities in the green range, you’d be crazy to base a team around this ability. I’d suggest switching it to either purple or maybe yellow, to increase its value to a team composition.

Speaking of his yellow…ugh. Just replace it. There is no point in having low impact non-true healing. 1100 health is pointless in the 3 star range. OBW’s heal gives me health at 3 covers and that’s a 2 star ability…and cheaper…with an AP stealing device.

Doc Oct:
You really need to just start from scratch here. Yes, he has a niche as a special tile remover. But his blue costs at least 3 AP more than it should for what it provides, given it’s a worse Loki purple if there are no or very few special tiles on the board. His black is decent, but it isn’t game changing and, again, it relies on many many special tiles. If there are only 3 or 4 special tiles on the board (like Captain America would do), there is very little use for this ability. Finally, his green…overpriced, low impact, valuable AP color and does too many small things to be considered worthwhile except in extraordinarily rare scenarios.

She-hulk:
Her red is solid. Her blue has some uses, like removing CD tiles or converting patch’s strike tiles etc. But her green is one of the worst in the game. Like the above 2, it is in a high value AP color and it does pretty much nothing. I mean, yes, you get a small boost in healing (less than 1000 at max level) and you have a chance to reduce a color that they need. But it has too much variability and it may even be buggy. I’ve had it cast on me before and not notice any loss in AP in any of my ability colors.

Colossus:
Looks good on paper, but then you realize that in order to use his red effectively, you either have to make a match of his the turn prior, cast one of his abilities prior to using his red or already have his yellow active before casting his red. Making him one of these awkward combo reliant characters, like Beast. And on defense, his red is easily circumvented just by seeing he has accumulated 11 red and moving to one of his teammates for 1 turn (unless he cast yellow). Then, his black seems great. You can cast it and protect one character while simultaneously casting one of their abilities for free plus the additional damage. But then you realize it costs 13 black AP…Black is one of the strongest colors in the game. For the same (or lower) price, you can cast surgical strike, Rage of the Panther, Nightstalker, Summon Demons, or Masterstroke. Also, the vast majority of strong abilities cost less than 13 AP. So, you have a situation where farming for this ability, one that gives you roughly 33% chance to cast the desired ability, actually takes longer than just farming the ability that you actually want to cast. So the only real purpose of this ability is if you have a board covered in black tiles, such that you cascade 13 AP unintentionally. And what is the point of relying on that scenario?

Of all of them Beast is probably the easiest to fix on paper. His blue just needs to turn random tiles into blue special tiles, His Green needs more damage and his yellow just needs to cost less, do that and all of a sudden Beast becomes a dangerous damage support character.

She-Hulk. Her red is decent, obviously I'd like a tad more damage, but it is AoE. Her Green just needs to cost a lot less and it would be decent. As for blue, it's the most complicated to fix but is also what Falcon needs, and that is that if there is not enough special tiles out for her to create 2 ally 1 enemy, then she automatically creates them but at 1/2 rate for the ally. Example, there is 1 strike tile out, use settlement it turns the strike tile into the 139 strike tile, but then creates a 70 ally and a 70 enemy. If there was two tiles then she creates 2 139 tiles and 1 enemy tile at 70, but if 3 tiles then 2 139 allies and 1 44 enemy. Just like falcon should creates random special tiles if 0, 1, or 2 are on the board when yellow's matched. whether it's protect, attack or strike, but the value IMO should just be 1, that way at least future yellow matches can start building them up.

Colossus--Not sure with this guy. His yellow is solid although like many people, we were hoping this would be a passive. His red is great except how it's so hard to keep him out front especially if not featured, so this needs to be tweaked to make it easier or just gotten rid of and Fastball Special is just an AP too expensive.

Dock Ock needs the most work. As is his skills are too expensive, but his blue needs to do more damage and if you want to keep the 8 thing, then at higher levels maybe it switches 8 triples of tiles but this should be along the lines of Loki cost. Seriously, if you did nothing but made this cost 5 it would do so much for the skill. Black is okay but needs more damage on the tiles or have it set to when any enemy special tile is destroyed in any way, like with Doc Ock's blue, or a surgical strike, not just on matches, then this skill becomes downright awesome. His green, double the damage and allow you to steal the AP not just destroy and destroy random special tile, stun is fine as is, do this skill and the skill is fair and good for the cost.

ECOcrush

I've been following the forums for a while now and had to finally join just to say that Colossus being pulled is a real bummer. I'm 135 days in and Colossus is my highest leveled 3* character by FAR and I enjoy using him - although I have trouble keeping him alive for many consecutive matches at a time.

I have Colossus at lvl 114
xforce at 94
Sentry at 78
IW, Fury, and 4hor at 70
GSBW, Punisher, BP at 68
Blade at 66
...

Hopefully I'll be getting another Blade cover when Combined Arms ends but that doesn't help me much (although I like his abilities). But pulling Colossus sets me back in maxing my first 3* by a LOT.

I'm also REALLY upset that I haven't gotten a 3* character from a single Heroic or better token in a VERY long time. I did get 3 3*s from the Heroic 10-pack I earned recently but I swear I've had better luck with standard tokens than with Heroic tokens when it comes to 3* and 4* covers. They have to increase the drop rates for 3* characters!

ECOcrush

Oh, what a surprise.

Just earned two Simulator tokens => Just earned two 2* covers...

Unknown

Once we actually get our hands on Doom's purple covers, doom vs doom matches will maybe get tedious once they start overwriting/disarming each other's traps

Unknown

Red Panda wrote:

Once we actually get our hands on Doom's purple covers, doom vs doom matches will maybe get tedious once they start overwriting/disarming each other's traps

Like Falcon's Redwing

GrimSkald

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Red Panda wrote:

Once we actually get our hands on Doom's purple covers, doom vs doom matches will maybe get tedious once they start overwriting/disarming each other's traps

Like Falcon's Redwing

It's random, though, so it will only start getting frequent once the available purple starts getting low. Honestly don't think of them as traps (traps are the mechanic, but they're not traps like DD and Nick set,) think of them for ticks to be expended in the giant "kaboom!"

Unknown

Vhailorx wrote:

As per the 12/14 community rankings:

Of the top 10 ranked 3*s in the game, 5 are currently vaulted of have been vaulted for multiple seasons in the recent past (Lazy Thor, Lazy Daken, Black Panther, cMags, Patch)

Of the top 20 ranked 3*s, 8 are currently vaulted or have been vaulted recently (five above + Human Torch, Punisher, Loki)

going to the top 25 gives 4 more vaulted characters (Psylocke, Daredevil, Doom, GSBW).

[note that some of these numbers aren't quite fair as someone like loki was definitely not a top 20 character pre-vaulting).


So the overall distribution is OK, but it definitely seems like they have been vaulting the very best and the very worst characters, leaving the mediocre people in the middle (think spidey, hulk, falcon, etc).

Overall, I think the vaulting system has had a decidedly negative effect for players.

On the positive side, vaulting does let all 3*s go into the token rotation without "making" d3p lower the individual drop rates (though this begs a followup question of why ~16% chance of a 3* in any herioc token is an uncrossable barrier).

On the neutral side, established veterans already have almost all of these characters, so they haven't been hurt at all. Perhaps they have even been able to build the new characters slightly faster.

Another theoretical positive is that characters can be modified while in the vault. But this is clearly unnecessary since Sentry and Hood were significantly changed without any time vaulted.

Weighing against those considerations are the one, massive negative with vaulting both as a general concept and as it has been specifically practiced here. In general, vaulting is just another way of diluting the 3* pool. Rather than diluting the chance of pulling every character by a set amount, vaulting just concentrates the diminished pull value into a few characters. So vaulting isn't a long term fix to the problem. At best its a short term patch.

And worse, the specific characters that have been vaulted are essential characters (3* thor, patch, lazy Daken, BP, cMags in particular, also punisher). these are the 3* workhorses. It is quite difficult to be a top tier contender without using these characters (even more so now that Sentry-bombing is dead), or the top 4*s that are even harder to get.

What message does it send to new players to have a game with a very slow progression curve, where it can take months to build even a single 3* character, and then tell those new players that they can't even get started on that long process because the only characters worth building aren't available?

TL;DR = Vaulting has been a terrible, terrible thing for transition players, especially because of the particular characters who have been vaulted.

So you prefer they don't vault? They would still have the same cover rewards during that time period (ask veterans, Hood used to rarely be reward covers for on example), so they only change would be tokens. You don't have to redeem your tokens until they have characters available that you want. If anything, this works out in players' favor. Because the odds of getting the cover you want would be further diminished if there was no vaulting.

TL;DR: The system has changed. If you would learn to adapt to it (By the way, this is what veterans do. They do not redeem tokens until they have the best chance of getting the covers they want the most. One has 1000+ standard tokens currently), you would have a greater advantage than previously.

Unknown

GrimSkald wrote:

DrUnpleasant wrote:

Red Panda wrote:

Once we actually get our hands on Doom's purple covers, doom vs doom matches will maybe get tedious once they start overwriting/disarming each other's traps

Like Falcon's Redwing

It's random, though, so it will only start getting frequent once the available purple starts getting low. Honestly don't think of them as traps (traps are the mechanic, but they're not traps like DD and Nick set,) think of them for ticks to be expended in the giant "kaboom!"

Yeah I imagine in Doom's featured PVP it'll be a race to the detonator, assuming both sides have purple covers... otherwise the have nots will need to prepare reliable counter measures.

scottee

Can traps overwrite enemy traps? I thought they just don't get placed.

Unknown

scottee wrote:

Can traps overwrite enemy traps? I thought they just don't get placed.

Yeah I've seen it overwrite & disarm them. Like Daredevil Ambush vs Caltrops, or Fury vs Electra. Since their placement is hidden & random, if an existing enemy trap is already there when yours is placed it'll be disarmed and replaced with yours but the location will be obvious if the board remains fairly static.

SnowcaTT

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

Why are Ldaken, Lthor and Cmags still vaulted?

Why keep the few useful PVP juggernauts vaulted?

This. LDaken was just out, so I get not coming back. But LThor and CMags have been out since season 8. These need to come back.

I'm on day 291 and have -one- red Mags cover. I guess I could buy more, right? Well, first I'd buy LThor covers - but want to guess how many yellow covers I have after 291 days? Not enough to let me buy more! (read:zero)

You have to make covers available often enough for players to actually get them if you want players to buy further covers!

Quebbster

SnowcaTT wrote:

lokiagentofhotness wrote:

Why are Ldaken, Lthor and Cmags still vaulted?

Why keep the few useful PVP juggernauts vaulted?

This. LDaken was just out, so I get not coming back. But LThor and CMags have been out since season 8. These need to come back.

I'm on day 291 and have -one- red Mags cover. I guess I could buy more, right? Well, first I'd buy LThor covers - but want to guess how many yellow covers I have after 291 days? Not enough to let me buy more! (read:zero)

You have to make covers available often enough for players to actually get them if you want players to buy further covers!

I'm hoping next season rotation will see Ragnarok, Magneto and Thor returning. They seem to be put back in chronological order.