**** Star-Lord (Legendary Outlaw) ****

Unknown

raisinbman wrote:

ark123 wrote:

I'd take out Dino in that sentence for Fury. Dino is pretty unplayable. After the novelty wore off and sentry was nerfed, I see like a single Dino a pvp, and it's usually under 800.

Agreed that the 3*s os late have been pretty well designed as a while, gamora notwithstanding.

Hood needs to be mentioned here because this is a game where stealing ap and reducing costs almost boil down to the same thing. It's not like you're gonna cast 6 or 7 surgical strikes in a match. The most important by far is the first, so gathering 7 yellow to make surgical cost 10 seems like a pretty awful deal. This is less the case in pve, but even in pve I have trouble picturing this guy ever being better than Lcap.

Yeah I forgot Fury earlier.

I dunno. I still think Dino is awesome. Yes, he's not X-Force *rolls eyes* - but he's still a powerful 4* that has lots of HP.

And sure you may not have seen dino alot, but he takes an insane amount of Iso to actually get up there, not to mention the fact you can't readily get covers.

I just don't think Dino isn't being used because he's "bad" but because there are "conditions" to actually use him.

Any player with half a brain is gonna level/invest in X-Force/4*Thor before devil

Actually it's 4thor that killed dino. After you have a bunch of charged tiles it's not hard to fire off a couple reds, so health basically doesn't matter.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

ark123 wrote:

I'd take out Dino in that sentence for Fury. Dino is pretty unplayable. After the novelty wore off and sentry was nerfed, I see like a single Dino a pvp, and it's usually under 800.

Agreed that the 3*s os late have been pretty well designed as a while, gamora notwithstanding.

Hood needs to be mentioned here because this is a game where stealing ap and reducing costs almost boil down to the same thing. It's not like you're gonna cast 6 or 7 surgical strikes in a match. The most important by far is the first, so gathering 7 yellow to make surgical cost 10 seems like a pretty awful deal. This is less the case in pve, but even in pve I have trouble picturing this guy ever being better than Lcap.

Yeah I forgot Fury earlier.

I dunno. I still think Dino is awesome. Yes, he's not X-Force *rolls eyes* - but he's still a powerful 4* that has lots of HP.

And sure you may not have seen dino alot, but he takes an insane amount of Iso to actually get up there, not to mention the fact you can't readily get covers.

I just don't think Dino isn't being used because he's "bad" but because there are "conditions" to actually use him.

Any player with half a brain is gonna level/invest in X-Force/4*Thor before devil

Actually it's 4thor that killed dino. After you have a bunch of charged tiles it's not hard to fire off a couple reds, so health basically doesn't matter.

This is cyclical - health doesn't matter, not being x-force/4*Thor doesn't matter. I understand that.

Suspend your disbelief for a second, yeah?

Unknown

raisinbman wrote:

ark123 wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

ark123 wrote:

I'd take out Dino in that sentence for Fury. Dino is pretty unplayable. After the novelty wore off and sentry was nerfed, I see like a single Dino a pvp, and it's usually under 800.

Agreed that the 3*s os late have been pretty well designed as a while, gamora notwithstanding.

Hood needs to be mentioned here because this is a game where stealing ap and reducing costs almost boil down to the same thing. It's not like you're gonna cast 6 or 7 surgical strikes in a match. The most important by far is the first, so gathering 7 yellow to make surgical cost 10 seems like a pretty awful deal. This is less the case in pve, but even in pve I have trouble picturing this guy ever being better than Lcap.

Yeah I forgot Fury earlier.

I dunno. I still think Dino is awesome. Yes, he's not X-Force *rolls eyes* - but he's still a powerful 4* that has lots of HP.

And sure you may not have seen dino alot, but he takes an insane amount of Iso to actually get up there, not to mention the fact you can't readily get covers.

I just don't think Dino isn't being used because he's "bad" but because there are "conditions" to actually use him.

Any player with half a brain is gonna level/invest in X-Force/4*Thor before devil

Actually it's 4thor that killed dino. After you have a bunch of charged tiles it's not hard to fire off a couple reds, so health basically doesn't matter.

This is cyclical - health doesn't matter, not being x-force/4*Thor doesn't matter. I understand that.

Suspend your disbelief for a second, yeah?

That's a lot of faith you're putting on the character designers that gave us Elektra and Beast.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

????????

I'm going to stop responding to you because it seems like you didn't even read this thread to actually see my viewpoint. Like, did you even read what I originally said? How there were only a couple of good 4* characters? How I felt Starlord was going to turn out?

PS: I've said multiple times on these boards how I feel about Elektra and Beast, even.

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

XF / Ladythor are so above the curve that releasing characters as good as them is just going to result in insane power creep. Maybe Demiurge needs to consider nerfing them as a result.

Did Phantron hack your forum account?

NorthernPolarity

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

XF / Ladythor are so above the curve that releasing characters as good as them is just going to result in insane power creep. Maybe Demiurge needs to consider nerfing them as a result.

Did Phantron hack your forum account?

There is some method to phantrons madness. I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level. Theres probably an issue with the metagame when all you see are xf ladythor walls, and the entire game revolves around how characters pair with ladythor. Hell look at this thread: wheres people saying "oh, starlord xf seems sweet: 5 active colors, etc". Nope, they just go straight to ladythor.

Unknown

4* need their own pvp event away from the 3-1 crowd

Unknown

I think Thor benefits more from the game format as opposed to being grossly overpowered like X Force. If Power Surge is on green, that'd greatly reduce her power and there's no way a character like Thor needs to have a strong attack on an off color given her generally top tier stats. If Power Surge costs green then you're already giving up at least 5000 damage that could've been used on an X Force so the ensuing 10K Smite is no longer as overpowered. Additionally due to format, the easiest way to deal with Thor which would be to have 3 guys with 10K HP, is often impossible because you'd have to be like Colo to be able to afford to get most featured character to a point where they'd have 10K HP (this would require a max level character on 6800 HP class, and even higher HP class guys need close to max levels). Unless you're just particularly gutsy you can't just Power Surge with all 3 enemies up without taking a considerable risk but since the format usually devolves into a 2on2 this risk is generally nonexistent. In fact, if the new character release rate continues at its current pace with an emphasis on 4*s, it'd be increasingly less likely that your 3*, which is roughly picked randomly out of the pool of all available 3*s with a slight emphasis on newer guys, would actually be at a level that'd be able to do anything useful. But since 4*s are almost never featured, it wouldn't matter even if you have every 4* maxed out. You'd still be stuck at whatever 3* that are featured in 99% of the events who has an increasing probability of being underleveled, which sure isn't going to help against Thor who excels in a 2on2 situation.

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level.

Well, I would argue it from a PvE perspective, when they persist in setting up feeder nodes that can hit you with over 5k damage on turn 3. It's better to have an option other than "skip" or "die".

And in PvP, I don't know, regardless of power levels there will always be a character regarded as "the best" that people will gravitate towards. Not sure it matter a whole lot if he/she is a "10" or an "11".

CrookedKnight

NorthernPolarity wrote:

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

XF / Ladythor are so above the curve that releasing characters as good as them is just going to result in insane power creep. Maybe Demiurge needs to consider nerfing them as a result.

Did Phantron hack your forum account?

There is some method to phantrons madness. I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level. Theres probably an issue with the metagame when all you see are xf ladythor walls, and the entire game revolves around how characters pair with ladythor. Hell look at this thread: wheres people saying "oh, starlord xf seems sweet: 5 active colors, etc". Nope, they just go straight to ladythor.

But Starlord and X-Force don't work together because one relies on countdown tiles and the other blows up the board with every move, it's not just "Goddess of Thunder is better, end of discussion."

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level.

Well, I would argue it from a PvE perspective, when they persist in setting up feeder nodes that can hit you with over 5k damage on turn 3. It's better to have an option other than "skip" or "die".

And in PvP, I don't know, regardless of power levels there will always be a character regarded as "the best" that people will gravitate towards. Not sure it matter a whole lot if he/she is a "10" or an "11".

PvE is an arms race because there are broken characters so they set up even more broken encounters to deal with the broken characters and this cycle just perpetuates itself. Ever since they started making the 'showcase featured character' PvE node replayable I noticed that when you're forced to use all 3 of the characters provided by the game it's surprisingly difficult even when you've a massive level advantage over the enemy. If your average team looked like Spiderman + Deadpool + Thor you wouldn't need anything crazy on the enemy side, but there's no reason why you'd pick a team like that which is why you have all those crazy turn 3 instant kill stuff.

Someone's always going to be the best but X Force is more like a 20 on a scale of 10 and Thor is closer to a 15 than an 11.

simonsez

Phantron wrote:

PvE is an arms race because there are broken characters so they set up even more broken encounters to deal with the broken characters and this cycle just perpetuates itself.

Yes, but it's an arms race where the devs are supplying the weapons to both sides. So I'm not willing to advocate that they start giving us less powerful stuff if there's no guarantee they're going to make similar changes to the AI formations. Why don't we start by insisting that they eliminate the B.S. feeder nodes and overscaled opponents, and then once they do, we can talk about balancing things on our end.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level.

Well, I would argue it from a PvE perspective, when they persist in setting up feeder nodes that can hit you with over 5k damage on turn 3. It's better to have an option other than "skip" or "die".

And in PvP, I don't know, regardless of power levels there will always be a character regarded as "the best" that people will gravitate towards. Not sure it matter a whole lot if he/she is a "10" or an "11".

It does matter. Going back to MTG(we seem to do that often), we don't want "power creep" where every character has to be better than the rest or they're just trash. Some will be worse, some should be equal, some will be better, some will be niche.

ultimately, I think a game should strive towards viability and variety in it's endgame. Of course, D3 would actually have to balance things for my hypothetical to mean anything first...

Unknown

raisinbman wrote:

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level.

Well, I would argue it from a PvE perspective, when they persist in setting up feeder nodes that can hit you with over 5k damage on turn 3. It's better to have an option other than "skip" or "die".

And in PvP, I don't know, regardless of power levels there will always be a character regarded as "the best" that people will gravitate towards. Not sure it matter a whole lot if he/she is a "10" or an "11".

It does matter. Going back to MTG(we seem to do that often), we don't want "power creep" where every character has to be better than the rest or they're just trash. Some will be worse, some should be equal, some will be better, some will be niche.

ultimately, I think a game should strive towards viability and variety in it's endgame. Of course, D3 would actually have to balance things for my hypothetical to mean anything first...

I remember this article from MTG it was about how there was one deck that dominated a format because it can hard cast Emerkaul by turn 4 reliably and that pretty much always won you the game, and the MTG designers, who actually know their own game very well, was like 'well you can just do this cheap combo that wins by turn 3', but wait to deal with that you just do the 2 turn kill trick, and then it's sort of a 'whoa, this is messed up' moment and they banned all the cards that enabled these things. MPQ can really use a similar examination too.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

simonsez wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I dont think anyone would argue that its preferable to have a metagame balanced around characters furys power level as opposed to characters that are xforce or ladythor power level.

Well, I would argue it from a PvE perspective, when they persist in setting up feeder nodes that can hit you with over 5k damage on turn 3. It's better to have an option other than "skip" or "die".

And in PvP, I don't know, regardless of power levels there will always be a character regarded as "the best" that people will gravitate towards. Not sure it matter a whole lot if he/she is a "10" or an "11".

It does matter. Going back to MTG(we seem to do that often), we don't want "power creep" where every character has to be better than the rest or they're just trash. Some will be worse, some should be equal, some will be better, some will be niche.

ultimately, I think a game should strive towards viability and variety in it's endgame. Of course, D3 would actually have to balance things for my hypothetical to mean anything first...

I remember this article from MTG it was about how there was one deck that dominated a format because it can hard cast Emerkaul by turn 4 reliably and that pretty much always won you the game, and the MTG designers, who actually know their own game very well, was like 'well you can just do this cheap combo that wins by turn 3', but wait to deal with that you just do the 2 turn kill trick, and then it's sort of a 'whoa, this is messed up' moment and they banned all the cards that enabled these things. MPQ can really use a similar examination too.

it's true. They're constantly watching the health of their games and how dominant certain decks, cards and strategies are. Quick Summary:

Before, power just increased and increased to the point of Eldrazi and 90% of cards were useless. This stopped around Innistrad(2-3 years ago), where they actually toned DOWN the overall power of newer cards(ofc you could still access older, more powerful cards in casual play/other formats). Ofc cards still were powerful, but many were situationally powerful or powerful-if-used-smart. And of course mistakes were made(thragtusk, snapcaster mage). This let deck variety flourish and of course there were still "T3H BEST" cards, but you could compete regardless.

The only other games I can think of with really really good balance that I've experienced are Street Fighter IV and DOTA 2. Both those games you can generally get away with picking any character because they're all (grade) S(really good) to B(powerful).

It may not be realistic to want this for MPQ, but I do think they can at least make every character playable and situationally useful.

That and/or weekly bans(for PVP only ofc).

Unknown

I wonder if having a clear best character who lingers at the top for a few months, then gets nerfed (repeat, repeat) would be a sustainable business model that would keep top-end players interested......... Star Lord and Elektra are interesting 4-star additions. They clearly are not meant to be world beaters but are pretty clearly deadlier than your above-average 3-star characters. I think that's how it should be. As more 4-stars get added (and they are coming), they can't all be better than the last 4-star. Allowing players to target more specific character development will lead to a more interesting, diverse mix for the game overall as more and more characters are added. I think the current system (which lead to dozens of 3-4 cover characters and none that are fully developed (for all new players going forward)) is a bigger overall threat to the game's longevity than overall character balance. But then again, the game only has a certain shelflife anyway, so make money, make money, dollar dollar bill.

IceIX

Added pre-release ability upgrade info to the OP. As always, could change before he is released.

Unknown

I'm guessing those are his level 70 stats so at level 270 he'll do roughly double damage. I still am not sure what's the point of yellow in terms of design but otherwise he looks okay but it does nothing to address the dominance of Thor and X Force.

Does the red not do damage until the CD resolves or does it do damage and then puts down a CD? From the wording, it souds like the former, which isn't very good.

NorthernPolarity

4 ability damage basically double from 4 to 5, so we're looking at a 7k damage red, 5k + 1.4k team damage for purple, etc.

Build wise (because now we actually know whats going on instead of blindly guessing), it seems like 5 red is a no brainer: 7k damage (even on a 2 turn cd) is pretty insane and its only 8 ap to boot. I'm guessing the builds we'll see are either 4/4/5 or 5/3/5:

3->4 yellow is good since it bumps it up to 2 ap reduction. 4->5 yellow adds purple, which is fine but non essential.
3->4 purple reduces the CD (pretty big), and 4->5 purple doubles the damage from 4k to 5k + 1.5k to the other guys.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

4 ability damage basically double from 4 to 5, so we're looking at a 7k damage red, 5k + 1.4k team damage for purple, etc.

Build wise (because now we actually know whats going on instead of blindly guessing), it seems like 5 red is a no brainer: 7k damage (even on a 2 turn cd) is pretty insane and its only 8 ap to boot. I'm guessing the builds we'll see are either 4/4/5 or 5/3/5:

3->4 yellow is good since it bumps it up to 2 ap reduction. 4->5 yellow adds purple, which is fine but non essential.
3->4 purple reduces the CD (pretty big), and 4->5 purple doubles the damage from 4k to 5k + 1.5k to the other guys.

The red goes up to a 3 turn CD when upgraded since its got a detrimental effect to the enemy while it's up. However, if the damage isn't dealt until the CD expires, I'd argue that's a pretty significant loss there.