The Hunt: Jan 21 - 26

Quebbster

Junebugkiller wrote:

Phantron wrote:

They really need to clean up this conceptually because it's frankly pretty embarassing to see a two step infinite loop in something that's supposed to be competitive.

Almost as embarrassing as calling for a nerf on a 2* MnM and 3* Mystique combo. Is it infinite loop? Can you do it 10 times in a row without using boost and no health packs?

PS.
Can we get a mod to move all this whining to the proper thread.

Once it gets rolling you can pretty much keep doing it as long as you please. The one thing that might stop you is that Infiltration may not yield enough purple to fuel another Polarity shift, but the more you use Infiltration the more saturated the board will become and the easier it will be to make mega-cascades. I tried Hood/MNMags/Mystique on the Bullseye III node without boosts and curbstomped level 300 villains.

Unknown

Quebbster wrote:

Junebugkiller wrote:

Phantron wrote:

They really need to clean up this conceptually because it's frankly pretty embarassing to see a two step infinite loop in something that's supposed to be competitive.

Almost as embarrassing as calling for a nerf on a 2* MnM and 3* Mystique combo. Is it infinite loop? Can you do it 10 times in a row without using boost and no health packs?

PS.
Can we get a mod to move all this whining to the proper thread.

Once it gets rolling you can pretty much keep doing it as long as you please. The one thing that might stop you is that Infiltration may not yield enough purple to fuel another Polarity shift, but the more you use Infiltration the more saturated the board will become and the easier it will be to make mega-cascades. I tried Hood/MNMags/Mystique on the Bullseye III node without boosts and curbstomped level 300 villains.

1. The combo is obviously PVE only. The defense aspect stinks and the combo takes a long time.
2. Even in PVE the combo takes a long time. Why is this important? WIth 8 hour refresh timers, speed is important. Therefore, while the combo has a higher percentage of success to be overscaled nodes, using the combo will not impact the higher tier player ranking.
3. If the combo does not affect the key player rankings in PVE or PVP, then the combo is a "funsies" combo that has not real impact on the game. Hence, any nerf would be a nerf just to for nerfsake.
4. If there was a nerf, all they have to do is switch MQ's blue ability to purple and her purple ability to blue. Per MNM and GSBW, there is a track record of using purple abilities to change tile colors. Per 4or, MBW, C Storm, etc., there is a track record of blue abilities having stun.
5. MNM should not be nerfed. Nerfing MNM would in effect nerf the best 2* roster combo such as C Storm, M Hawkeye, Etc.
6. Players that keep calling for nerfs (except Sentry, who was overnerfed by the developers and enjoys spending time with Yelena and IW now) need to get a grip. There are enough characters without much use, instead of trying to bring every character down to that level, they should be arguing for buffs to other other characters to bring them UP to the level of other characters. For exaples, Loki and Doom rock now. This is the treatment Beast and IW should get, instead of focusing your anger on other characters such as X-Force.

Trisul

stephen43084 wrote:

1. The combo is obviously PVE only. The defense aspect stinks and the combo takes a long time.
2. Even in PVE the combo takes a long time. Why is this important? WIth 8 hour refresh timers, speed is important. Therefore, while the combo has a higher percentage of success to be overscaled nodes, using the combo will not impact the higher tier player ranking.
3. If the combo does not affect the key player rankings in PVE or PVP, then the combo is a "funsies" combo that has not real impact on the game. Hence, any nerf would be a nerf just to for nerfsake.
4. If there was a nerf, all they have to do is switch MQ's blue ability to purple and her purple ability to blue. Per MNM and GSBW, there is a track record of using purple abilities to change tile colors. Per 4or, MBW, C Storm, etc., there is a track record of blue abilities having stun.
5. MNM should not be nerfed. Nerfing MNM would in effect nerf the best 2* roster combo such as C Storm, M Hawkeye, Etc.
6. Players that keep calling for nerfs (except Sentry, who was overnerfed by the developers and enjoys spending time with Yelena and IW now) need to get a grip. There are enough characters without much use, instead of trying to bring every character down to that level, they should be arguing for buffs to other other characters to bring them UP to the level of other characters. For exaples, Loki and Doom rock now. This is the treatment Beast and IW should get, instead of focusing your anger on other characters such as X-Force.

The only one calling for nerfs outright is Phantron. I'm merely predicting it.

That being said, I'm not so sure Phantron's wrong, since almost all the points you mention in the list were given for why old broken CMags shouldn't be nerfed too, and it seems to now be general consensus that in retrospect nerfing CMags was good for the game.

Also, I find it funny that people still insist that never nerfing characters is the best way to balance a game.

orbitalint

Trisul wrote:

That being said, I'm not so sure Phantron's wrong, since almost all the points you mention in the list were given for why old broken CMags shouldn't be nerfed too, and it seems to now be general consensus that in retrospect nerfing CMags was good for the game.

Also, I find it funny that people still insist that never nerfing characters is the best way to balance a game.

Yes but CMags could do it on his own. Patch only accelerated the win. In this instance, with the synergy required, amount of time it takes to get it going and those instances where it doesn't work because of a non-targeted MQ blue, I'm hoping the devs don't neuter this combo. Tweak MQ's conversion down a tile, maybe, but don't go all Hood/4hor on it please.

If MQ's blue were targeted, yes, you have surefire infinite loop - need to nerf. But, right now, I'd say maybe 70-80% loop chance on a single infiltration after Mags purple? Close to 95% with a back-to-back use? (Just using guesstimates for illustration my simulation forumites.) Yes, it is amazing synergy, but it still fizzles from time to time because of those chances catching up with you. The longstanding MNMags/Storm is the same way if the board is dry of purple and I can reliably take down most any node with that combo too.

Off topic, do we know if MQ blue converts an equal distribution of purple and black? Or is it random?

Unknown

C Mags could rock PVP and PVE. C Mags also sped up matches. That's the complete opposite of the MNM/MQ combo.

Also, no need for a nerf when simply switching the blue ability to purple and vice versa would do the trick (in a worst case scenario).

I used that combo once in the hunt, and that was when my A-teamers were either all gone or needed for PVP. Why didn't I use them more? Because they are so, and against scaled opponents, one or both will get killed before the combo gets going.

Unknown

Polarity Shift by itself is okay if it was never possible to generate purple AP from blue, but someone always forgets. Just like Deceptive Tactics will be equally broken if it was possible to generate yellow or purple AP from green, and sure you can say currently green doesn't do that, but eventually someone's going to come around and say, 'what if green generated another color's AP?' If by design only a certain color can generate another color's AP that'd be unfair but it wouldn't be possible to infinite, but there's no such thing. Just a quick look we have:

Red: Generates random AP (Polarized Force)
Green: Generates large amount of random AP (Lightning Strike, Lightning Storm, virtually any board shake move)
Blue: Generates black AP (Technopathic Strike), generates semi random purple/black AP (Infilitration)
Purple: Generates green AP (Deceptive Tactics), generates blue AP (Polarity Shift)
Yellow: Generates green AP (Thunder Strike), generates all but yellow AP (Recharge).
Black: Nothing comes to mind off hand.

There isn't a clear pattern to this. It's at best random and it just happens currently there's only one path that forms a loop, but it wouldn't take much to do so. Lightning Strike and Mistress of the Storm (when it just shattered all environmental tiles) can use to come pretty close to infinite even without Oasis/Thorned Rose and both are random AP via board shakeup. Of course Mistress of the Storm only cost 5 AP, but even random AP generation can infinite which is why Lightning Strike got nerfed from 16 to 14 tiles and Mistress of the Storm no longer resembles what it used to do. Rather than cleaning each instance of this up the game needs to make sure it's never possible to do this in the first place.

With the recent change to refresh timer, being slow doesn't matter as much because once you're out of health pack you might as well take your time to grind out an extra clear in the final 8 hours while waiting for health pack to replenish. It's relatively slow but not that slow with crit/boost match damage, and pretty much every node has a crit boost as a reward so there's a lot of those to use.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

Also, no need for a nerf when simply switching the blue ability to purple and vice versa would do the trick (in a worst case scenario).

Sure, and then 3 months later a dev is going to say, "I got a great idea to make a blue ability that generates purple AP!" and you're back to where we started. In fact, that's probably what got us into this mess. I'm not inherently opposed to targeted color generation abilities, but it's clear the dev lose track of them. If only purple can generate other AP that'd be fine. Maybe way overpowered, but you wouldn't be able to infinite if only one color can generate another color's AP.

fmftint

stephen43084 wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

Junebugkiller wrote:

Phantron wrote:

They really need to clean up this conceptually because it's frankly pretty embarassing to see a two step infinite loop in something that's supposed to be competitive.

Almost as embarrassing as calling for a nerf on a 2* MnM and 3* Mystique combo. Is it infinite loop? Can you do it 10 times in a row without using boost and no health packs?

PS.
Can we get a mod to move all this whining to the proper thread.

Once it gets rolling you can pretty much keep doing it as long as you please. The one thing that might stop you is that Infiltration may not yield enough purple to fuel another Polarity shift, but the more you use Infiltration the more saturated the board will become and the easier it will be to make mega-cascades. I tried Hood/MNMags/Mystique on the Bullseye III node without boosts and curbstomped level 300 villains.

1. The combo is obviously PVE only. The defense aspect stinks and the combo takes a long time.
2. Even in PVE the combo takes a long time. Why is this important? WIth 8 hour refresh timers, speed is important. Therefore, while the combo has a higher percentage of success to be overscaled nodes, using the combo will not impact the higher tier player ranking.
3. If the combo does not affect the key player rankings in PVE or PVP, then the combo is a "funsies" combo that has not real impact on the game. Hence, any nerf would be a nerf just to for nerfsake.
4. If there was a nerf, all they have to do is switch MQ's blue ability to purple and her purple ability to blue. Per MNM and GSBW, there is a track record of using purple abilities to change tile colors. Per 4or, MBW, C Storm, etc., there is a track record of blue abilities having stun.
5. MNM should not be nerfed. Nerfing MNM would in effect nerf the best 2* roster combo such as C Storm, M Hawkeye, Etc.
6. Players that keep calling for nerfs (except Sentry, who was overnerfed by the developers and enjoys spending time with Yelena and IW now) need to get a grip. There are enough characters without much use, instead of trying to bring every character down to that level, they should be arguing for buffs to other other characters to bring them UP to the level of other characters. For exaples, Loki and Doom rock now. This is the treatment Beast and IW should get, instead of focusing your anger on other characters such as X-Force.

3. This combo can and does affect pve ranking. Example, I finished 2nd in my slice one main, 600 behind 1st, 1k ahead of third only because Magstique allowed me to reliably clear the bullseye leg much longer than I could have without

Trisul

fmftint wrote:

3. This combo can and does affect pve ranking. Example, I finished 2nd in my slice one main, 600 behind 1st, 1k ahead of third only because Magstique allowed me to reliably clear the bullseye leg much longer than I could have without

Yeah, the speed-clear-at-sub-end aspect of PvE wasn't nearly as important as we all thought it might be.

orbitalint wrote:

Yes but CMags could do it on his own. Patch only accelerated the win. In this instance, with the synergy required, amount of time it takes to get it going and those instances where it doesn't work because of a non-targeted MQ blue, I'm hoping the devs don't neuter this combo. Tweak MQ's conversion down a tile, maybe, but don't go all Hood/4hor on it please.

If MQ's blue were targeted, yes, you have surefire infinite loop - need to nerf. But, right now, I'd say maybe 70-80% loop chance on a single infiltration after Mags purple? Close to 95% with a back-to-back use? (Just using guesstimates for illustration my simulation forumites.) Yes, it is amazing synergy, but it still fizzles from time to time because of those chances catching up with you. The longstanding MNMags/Storm is the same way if the board is dry of purple and I can reliably take down most any node with that combo too.

Off topic, do we know if MQ blue converts an equal distribution of purple and black? Or is it random?

It doesn't really matter if a broken combo is just with 1 character, 2, or even 3. The devs were quick to nerf Hood before infinite loops could be made with GT, and I'm glad they did. Trivializing defense is not a good thing.

I think these things matter here in regards to combos and potential loops:
- What are the percentages of continuous looping? (70-80% seems a bit too high to be considered balanced)
- How do loop success percentages change while looping?
- How much incidental damage is done while looping?

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

It doesn't really matter if a broken combo is just with 1 character, 2, or even 3. The devs were quick to nerf Hood before infinite loops could be made with GT, and I'm glad they did. Trivializing defense is not a good thing.

I think these things matter here in regards to combos and potential loops:
- What are the percentages of continuous looping? (70-80% seems a bit too high to be considered balanced)
- How do loop success percentages change while looping?
- How much incidental damage is done while looping?

The loop can break if you only have enough for Infilitration depending on your luck and existing board, but if you have enough for 2 Infilitration it's very hard to not loop itself. If you assume you can pick up 10 blue with Polarity Shift then that means you need about 8 blue to be on the safe side. Or you can just feel lucky or at least wait a bit for the first Infilitration for the purple to replenish. Since the recent patch greatly reduced match damage, incidental damage is just match damage which you can survive. The irony is that being fragile is irrelevent after a certain point when it comes to ability damage because nobody can survive it anyway, so if Daken gets a 7K Chemical Reaction that instantly downed your Magneto it really doesn't matter because it'd almost certain be enough to down anyone else after adding the damage from Phermone Rage you're likely to pile up. There would be a genuine drawback to use someone like Magneto if Ares can't kill almost anyone with a Sunder, but since he can you're not worried if he does get enough for Sunder because no one else can realistically survive.

Trisul

Phantron wrote:

The loop can break if you only have enough for Infilitration depending on your luck and existing board, but if you have enough for 2 Infilitration it's very hard to not loop itself. If you assume you can pick up 10 blue with Polarity Shift then that means you need about 8 blue to be on the safe side. Or you can just feel lucky or at least wait a bit for the first Infilitration for the purple to replenish. Since the recent patch greatly reduced match damage, incidental damage is just match damage which you can survive. The irony is that being fragile is irrelevent after a certain point when it comes to ability damage because nobody can survive it anyway, so if Daken gets a 7K Chemical Reaction that instantly downed your Magneto it really doesn't matter because it'd almost certain be enough to down anyone else after adding the damage from Phermone Rage you're likely to pile up. There would be a genuine drawback to use someone like Magneto if Ares can't kill almost anyone with a Sunder, but since he can you're not worried if he does get enough for Sunder because no one else can realistically survive.

Yeah, if not ability damage, then the primary deterrent is then scaled enemy HP, which is trivialized by infinite combos anyway.

fmftint

Trisul wrote:

Phantron wrote:

The loop can break if you only have enough for Infilitration depending on your luck and existing board, but if you have enough for 2 Infilitration it's very hard to not loop itself. If you assume you can pick up 10 blue with Polarity Shift then that means you need about 8 blue to be on the safe side. Or you can just feel lucky or at least wait a bit for the first Infilitration for the purple to replenish. Since the recent patch greatly reduced match damage, incidental damage is just match damage which you can survive. The irony is that being fragile is irrelevent after a certain point when it comes to ability damage because nobody can survive it anyway, so if Daken gets a 7K Chemical Reaction that instantly downed your Magneto it really doesn't matter because it'd almost certain be enough to down anyone else after adding the damage from Phermone Rage you're likely to pile up. There would be a genuine drawback to use someone like Magneto if Ares can't kill almost anyone with a Sunder, but since he can you're not worried if he does get enough for Sunder because no one else can realistically survive.

Yeah, if not ability damage, then the primary deterrent is then scaled enemy HP, which is trivialized by infinite combos anyway.

+damage purple/blue stacks to 50%
+crit stacks to 125%

both plentiful and cheap boosts
you would also bring along someone with a strong black ability or at the very least using masterstroke, which isn't a bad choice considering it drains enemy AP so the odd chance the AI gets a turn they don't have AP available to execute anything

Unknown

Are there any alliance members near the top 100 for this PVE that could tell me what the alliance score is for around top 100?

Unknown

Koko81 wrote:

Are there any alliance members near the top 100 for this PVE that could tell me what the alliance score is for around top 100?

103rd is 746,323. That's the closest I can see.

orbitalint

Trisul wrote:

It doesn't really matter if a broken combo is just with 1 character, 2, or even 3. The devs were quick to nerf Hood before infinite loops could be made with GT, and I'm glad they did. Trivializing defense is not a good thing.

To me, a 1 character broken combo is far more damaging to the game because the set of conditions it requires to work is that much smaller. CMags - get 10 blue, game over. Spidey could do infinite turns with stun lock and original Rags. All got nerfed for the right reasons - though spidey got a raw deal.

However, for Mag-stique, the conditions are somewhat higher to get it to work - collect enough purple and/or blue, have both on your team, hope the random placement goes well, repeat, maybe continue. Those are more than a few conditions which decrease success rates by a measurable amount. Yes, this combo gets to the same 95-98% win rate outcome for most any node in the game but that is just like any other high-end PVE/PVP character composition. I guess I just find this combos less of an issue because it actually requires some skill (albeit a small amount) and luck to pull off and is not an automatic "I win" button like the others nerfs needed to be. So you are talking about probabilities rather than certainties which seems in the vein of reasonable.

Heck, a terrible board in back to back games left me retreating twice because it wasn't happening and I already sacrificed my patch to a sniper shot to the head. Doesn't sound any different than a bad board for XF.

And on your 2nd point, all defense is trivial in PVP. I know it hurts to hear but we all accept it eventually.

Trisul

orbitalint wrote:

And on your 2nd point, all defense is trivial in PVP. I know it hurts to hear but we all accept it eventually.

I agree, and I think it's bad for the game. I would totally advocate the removal of boosts completely from the game to strengthen defense. (I'd also assume the devs would tune the Gauntlet down to compensate.)

lukewin

ale kalel 1981 wrote:

what is the best combination of characters to deal with snipers at 200 ???
the lethal blow off 8000 .. is absurd!

Best option is to retreat and not lose 8000 health for 1 guy. This is a serious recommendation, not a joke. Especially helpful when they are goon only nodes. My go to with goon only nodes, to try to escape losing no health, is LCap, IM40 and 2* Magneto. I have 2 yellow in IM40 so his recharge provides red and blue. Magneto can create blue, and my LCap is 3/5/5, so his red and blue can overwrite CD tiles. I usually boost 3 r/y and 3 b/p. Boosts are cheaper than HealthPacks. If I have a bad board where I'm going to get hit for a ridiculous amount of health, I retreat and try again.

lukewin

Trisul wrote:

fmftint wrote:

3. This combo can and does affect pve ranking. Example, I finished 2nd in my slice one main, 600 behind 1st, 1k ahead of third only because Magstique allowed me to reliably clear the bullseye leg much longer than I could have without

Yeah, the speed-clear-at-sub-end aspect of PvE wasn't nearly as important as we all thought it might be.

The 8 hr refresh eliminated the need for it to be a speed clear at the end of the sub. Unless you're neck and neck with your competition where a few hundred points matters, you can grind nodes anytime within that last 8 hr period, and not lose more than 1/6 value of a full clear of a node.

Ebolamonkey84

lukewin wrote:

ale kalel 1981 wrote:

what is the best combination of characters to deal with snipers at 200 ???
the lethal blow off 8000 .. is absurd!

Best option is to retreat and not lose 8000 health for 1 guy. This is a serious recommendation, not a joke. Especially helpful when they are goon only nodes. My go to with goon only nodes, to try to escape losing no health, is LCap, IM40 and 2* Magneto. I have 2 yellow in IM40 so his recharge provides red and blue. Magneto can create blue, and my LCap is 3/5/5, so his red and blue can overwrite CD tiles. I usually boost 3 r/y and 3 b/p. Boosts are cheaper than HealthPacks. If I have a bad board where I'm going to get hit for a ridiculous amount of health, I retreat and try again.

LCap is definitely one of the best characters to handle CD tiles. If you are talking about the node with two snipers, one pyro, I would recommend taking out the pyro first. Since Deadly Shot costs 0 AP, they balanced it out by only allowing one on the board at at time. Flamethrower has a shorter countdown and can be placed once a turn as long as they have the AP for it. After the Pyro is gone, you only have to deal with one CD at a time.

Unknown

Speed matters in PvE but if you're never in danger of losing then it does not since 8 hours is plenty of time to do everything 6 times if you never lost. Besides, the faster option would almost certainly cost health packs (if it's even faster at all) and unless someone is buying more health packs you'll eventually overtake that guy. Of course you can just do both and start with the faster options and then go back to your slower but safe option when your health pack runs out, so it's not like there's a drawback for having an infinite combo on your side.

Of course it's worse if it only takes one character to pull off an infinite (Ragnarok, Magneto) but the number of characters doesn't really mean anything unless some of those characters are constantly locked out because eventually people will know who they are. It isn't necessarily any more complicated to do say Polarity Shift -> Infilitration -> Infilitration -> Surgical Strike -> repeat compared to just keep on hitting 2 AP Thunderclap unless you think people are really, really stupid. By the way, infinite combos are probably not truly infinite, but it hardly matters. Magnetic Field didn't infinite but taking an extra 10-20 turns every turn isn't exactly fair. If you're not fighting something where Surgical Strike generates purple or blue (roughly half of DA) then Polarity Shift + Infilitration can indeed break just due to bad luck but it doesn't matter if it broke after the 10th iteration because that's still already way too many AP you've accumulated before it broke.

For PvP defense, there's a difference between attacker being overwhelmingly advantageous and an attacker never losing. Back when Spiderman was around, an attacker pretty much never lost, so you might as well never attack anyone with a Spiderman because they'll always retaliate later. With boosts, most high end PvP teams almost never lost, but there's an 'almost' clause there, and that is responsible for unpredictability. Since the attacker is only 'almost' sure he will win, he might skip you for something he's even more certain to win. It's not enough for balance but it's not like the Spiderman era where you know every team you attacked that has a Spiderman will hit you back, no question asked.