The Top Tier aka 4* Thor and Wolverine

Unknown

To those, such as myself, who went through the long and tedious process of leveling their X Force to 270, there is no reason for an X-Force nerf. He is a level 4 for a reason, and should be marginally better than the 3 stars. Also, a fully maxed thor and fully maxed x force are not impossible to beat. I've done it before, it is just a lot more difficult as it should be.

Scoregasms

This whole conversation is just about PVP right and trying to strike a balance there? I'm sure the vast majority of players who are still trying to cover 4hor and XF would be pretty disappointed to have the nerf bat come and strike them down before they even got a shot at using them in their former glory (I understand the whole Sentry bombing, CMags, Spidey, etc were all met with disappointment by a lot of players).

I do have fully covered 4hor and XF at 192 levels respectively and for me it comes down to speed. XF/4hor + whateverschlub is obviously the fastest team. It doesn't matter if I am facing 270 level opponents either, if I HP Rainbow Boost plus ISO Boost Blurple and Green/Black, the fight is over in maybe 7-10 matches and usually under a minute. 2*/3* teams, I don't usually HP boost (unless I'm rushing at the end), but I will ISO Boost and it's fast enough to climb and not take significant damage.

If it's a matter of balance and speed, why not just not allow Boosts for 4* in PVP? Def allow in PVE still cause I wouldn't know how to get past 395 Deadly Nodes without boosting (since there is no consequence at that point anyway to boost) and to speed up end of sub grinding. They are still powerful, but now it takes a little bit more time to win fights in PVP and in some cases, it's not the near 100% guarantee while boosting on a fight. 3* teams can still Boost and that could prove pretty significant when it comes to PVP climbing/placement and speed.

Honestly, not sure how the above thought would be taken by the player base, I personally wouldn't like it if changes were made to either character since I'm now so used to the PVP routine. I'm already sort of lackluster about the next PVP since Fat Thor is featured which means 4hor will be taking a backseat in that event. Doesn't help my Fat Thor is under leveled and under covered, lol, but XF even by himself is a game changer, but as it's already been said, 4hor will finish a fight in the blink of an eye once it's 3 on 2.

I've won more fights with 4hor last (wo)man standing than I have with XF, in PVP or PVE. 4hor can sustain stunlocks while gathering enough red to one shot folks, XF just doesn't have that ability unless you luck into green heavy boards with opponents with Green as their strongest color too.

Trisul

Themadtitan wrote:

To those, such as myself, who went through the long and tedious process of leveling their X Force to 270, there is no reason for an X-Force nerf. He is a level 4 for a reason, and should be marginally better than the 3 stars. Also, a fully maxed thor and fully maxed x force are not impossible to beat. I've done it before, it is just a lot more difficult as it should be.

The devs will have to balance player unhappiness with the health of the game as a whole, a tough place to be. There were a lot of grumbling with every major nerf in the past, but all of them are justifiable in retrospect and were good for the game.

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

Themadtitan wrote:

To those, such as myself, who went through the long and tedious process of leveling their X Force to 270, there is no reason for an X-Force nerf. He is a level 4 for a reason, and should be marginally better than the 3 stars. Also, a fully maxed thor and fully maxed x force are not impossible to beat. I've done it before, it is just a lot more difficult as it should be.

The devs will have to balance player unhappiness with the health of the game as a whole, a tough place to be. There were a lot of grumbling with every major nerf in the past, but all of them are justifiable in retrospect and were good for the game.

I respect your argument. The distinction being that X Force, Thoress, and other 4 stars require a much greater investment (monetary and/or an investment of time) to fully level and cover them. X Force prior to his buff was nigh worthless and really was not much of an improvement over Patch. As a matter of fact, Patch was better IMO. But, X Force has been updated, and is the standard of what a 4 star character should be.

I have faced, and defeated numerous fully leveled and covered X Force + Thoress teams, and while I find it considerably more difficult, it is not impossible.

Trust me, if X Force was nerfed, it would not just be subsequent grumbling, it would be justifiable anger to everyone who has invested the money & time to take him to playable levels.

NorthernPolarity

Themadtitan wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Themadtitan wrote:

To those, such as myself, who went through the long and tedious process of leveling their X Force to 270, there is no reason for an X-Force nerf. He is a level 4 for a reason, and should be marginally better than the 3 stars. Also, a fully maxed thor and fully maxed x force are not impossible to beat. I've done it before, it is just a lot more difficult as it should be.

The devs will have to balance player unhappiness with the health of the game as a whole, a tough place to be. There were a lot of grumbling with every major nerf in the past, but all of them are justifiable in retrospect and were good for the game.

I respect your argument. The distinction being that X Force, Thoress, and other 4 stars require a much greater investment (monetary and/or an investment of time) to fully level and cover them. X Force prior to his buff was nigh worthless and really was not much of an improvement over Patch. As a matter of fact, Patch was better IMO. But, X Force has been updated, and is the standard of what a 4 star character should be.

I have faced, and defeated numerous fully leveled and covered X Force + Thoress teams, and while I find it considerably more difficult, it is not impossible.

Trust me, if X Force was nerfed, it would not just be subsequent grumbling, it would be justifiable anger to everyone who has invested the money & time to take him to playable levels.

Your messages assume that an X-Force nerf would make him stone unplayable like Sentry. If the nerf was done properly (which they definitely HAVE the capacity to do as shown with C Mags, Loki, etc), then X-Force would still be better than 3*s and top tier material. Something like removing AP gain on surgical strike and boosting damage to ~6k destroyed on average would be a perfectly reasonable nerf that would still have X-Force be top tier: just not "obsolete every single other character in the game even when 50% boosted except for ladythor" tier. Your investment wouldn't be wasted because you got all the rewards for the era when he was undeniably the best character in the game, ON TOP of him still being a top tier character and still a huge part of your team.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Themadtitan wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Themadtitan wrote:

To those, such as myself, who went through the long and tedious process of leveling their X Force to 270, there is no reason for an X-Force nerf. He is a level 4 for a reason, and should be marginally better than the 3 stars. Also, a fully maxed thor and fully maxed x force are not impossible to beat. I've done it before, it is just a lot more difficult as it should be.

The devs will have to balance player unhappiness with the health of the game as a whole, a tough place to be. There were a lot of grumbling with every major nerf in the past, but all of them are justifiable in retrospect and were good for the game.

I respect your argument. The distinction being that X Force, Thoress, and other 4 stars require a much greater investment (monetary and/or an investment of time) to fully level and cover them. X Force prior to his buff was nigh worthless and really was not much of an improvement over Patch. As a matter of fact, Patch was better IMO. But, X Force has been updated, and is the standard of what a 4 star character should be.

I have faced, and defeated numerous fully leveled and covered X Force + Thoress teams, and while I find it considerably more difficult, it is not impossible.

Trust me, if X Force was nerfed, it would not just be subsequent grumbling, it would be justifiable anger to everyone who has invested the money & time to take him to playable levels.

Your messages assume that an X-Force nerf would make him stone unplayable like Sentry. If the nerf was done properly (which they definitely HAVE the capacity to do as shown with C Mags, Loki, etc), then X-Force would still be better than 3*s and top tier material. Something like removing AP gain on surgical strike and boosting damage to ~6k destroyed on average would be a perfectly reasonable nerf that would still have X-Force be top tier: just not "obsolete every single other character in the game even when 50% boosted except for ladythor" tier. Your investment wouldn't be wasted because you got all the rewards for the era when he was undeniably the best character in the game, ON TOP of him still being a top tier character and still a huge part of your team.

I hear you. IMO, he is perfect how he is. And no one invests that much time (and or money) into a character so that they can later be rendered unusable, or takes a dip in their power because people are whining that they keep getting beat by X Force and Thorress teams(not a shot at you, or anyone on this thread, as you both made good arguments). I think that instead of calling for a nerf, people really need to be asking for a strategy on how to beat them.

When I take them on, I ALWAYS eliminate X Force first. He is the only one of the two take can take AP which makes him so dangerous. Once he's done, I move on to Thor. If you deprive her of blue and red, she can be taken down with minimal effort. I have beaten them enough to know it can be done, and also that they shouldn't be nerfed because everyone is getting their a***** handed to them.

NorthernPolarity

Themadtitan wrote:

I hear you. IMO, he is perfect how he is. And no one invests that much time (and or money) into a character so that they can later be rendered unusable, or takes a dip in their power because people are whining that they keep getting beat by X Force and Thorress teams(not a shot at you, or anyone on this thread, as you both made good arguments). I think that instead of calling for a nerf, people really need to be asking for a strategy on how to beat them.

When I take them on, I ALWAYS eliminate X Force first. He is the only one of the two take can take AP which makes him so dangerous. Once he's done, I move on to Thor. If you deprive her of blue and red, she can be taken down with minimal effort. I have beaten them enough to know it can be done, and also that they shouldn't be nerfed because everyone is getting their a***** handed to them.

That's the wrong way to think about it. C. Mags and Spider-man were easy to beat on offense, but you would be absolutely insane to say that their blues weren't completely broken and didn't deserve to be nerfed. Characters should be judged by how oppressive they are on the metagame, and when the entire metagame revolves around X-Force / Ladythor, to the point where almost single featured character is irrelevant when considering team compositions because they're just that good, you have a sign that something should be nerfed.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Themadtitan wrote:

I hear you. IMO, he is perfect how he is. And no one invests that much time (and or money) into a character so that they can later be rendered unusable, or takes a dip in their power because people are whining that they keep getting beat by X Force and Thorress teams(not a shot at you, or anyone on this thread, as you both made good arguments). I think that instead of calling for a nerf, people really need to be asking for a strategy on how to beat them.

When I take them on, I ALWAYS eliminate X Force first. He is the only one of the two take can take AP which makes him so dangerous. Once he's done, I move on to Thor. If you deprive her of blue and red, she can be taken down with minimal effort. I have beaten them enough to know it can be done, and also that they shouldn't be nerfed because everyone is getting their a***** handed to them.

That's the wrong way to think about it. C. Mags and Spider-man were easy to beat on offense, but you would be absolutely insane to say that their blues weren't completely broken and didn't deserve to be nerfed. Characters should be judged by how oppressive they are on the metagame, and when the entire metagame revolves around X-Force / Ladythor, to the point where almost single featured character is irrelevant when considering team compositions because they're just that good, you have a sign that something should be nerfed.

Ok, in all fairness, Thor ****'s Blue is insanely powerful. I remember the first time I fought a 4 star Thor that was maxed out, I was unprepared for how nasty it can be. I think she hit me with two stuns, both lasting for 4 turns, and then she was still matching blue.

Unknown

On another note and totally unrelated; I hope that they add Thanos eventually. I can see his powers working a lot like Fury's. He could have a yellow ability called Infinity Gauntlet that fires off 6 different powers when you have 5 ap in each one. A black ability, having to do with his love for death that heals him, and maybe a red energy project ability.

ErikPeter

Since it seems to be the core of the imbalance, you should start a new thread about the Featured Character meta.

One way to address the power disparity would be something like boosting the Featured (3 star) character +100 levels by default, or more to match your highest level character. That way, new 3* covers probably fight at 166 for transition players, which is fine, and players with maxed 4*s get a nice level advantage for the featured character even if they're low on covers.

I think that solution would shake up the game a bit--it would make additional covers for featured characters desirable (to increase effectiveness) but not force you to spend a billion ISO on them right away.

They'd probably want to balance it out where there's still a drive to spend ISO on the character; but if, for example, having a maxed 4* meant your Featured character defaulted to 200, that would go a long way to making featured PvP more than 2 on 2. And it would be another incentive for new players to collect and level 4* characters, at the cost of further separating the 3* and 4* tiers.

Here's how it could work, more technically:
Featured characters are given a level boost equal to half the highest participating character's level.

So a single-covered 3* character on a 166 team is boosted to 123, and a maxed one is boosted to 249. On a team with a level 270 character, the featured character starts at 175 with one cover, and maxes at 301 with full covers.

Featured 4*s would probably want to use a toned down system (because maxing at 405 is a bit nutty) but could work the same way, letting even those 166 teams get some good use out of their (boosted to 153) featured friend.

You might want to put a minimum boost for really low-level new players, but I'm not sure it matters much. 1/2 level is a decent boost no matter what tier you're at.

jimstarooney

thats right, they are 4 stars so should be much better than 3 stars.even if a character is maxed in their own event 249 shouldnt be better than 270.a lot goes into maxing a 4 star and players that go through the procedure should be rewarded for it.and they are beatable,i beat a full blade/bthor/xf team yesterday with a 100 blade/hood/cmags.

Unknown

stephen43084 wrote:

But they are not going to change the PVP featured character format. I really almost feel that 4*'s should be banned from PVP unless their the featured character. They should be PVE powerhouses. The problem with that is they affect scaling for your other characters as well. It would be nice if PVE scaling was determined by the level of your characters that you use for that node. I digress.

1) X-Force shoud have true healing. His healing his not the problem. In high end PVP, where most of these 4* vs 4* battles take place, speed is key. No one is going to stop in the middle of a push (especially with shield cool downs) to take X-Force for a stroll in prologue. The reason X-Force can take damage now is because he's so fast that it limits the damage that he and the team takes. Between the low ap cost of green and the AP gain of black, X-Force can really make a battle fly. Once battles slow down, X-Force is going to take a lot more damage. Similar to Patch, even though Patch has great regeneration, he can be slow and so he needs the regeneration and even then it's not always enough.

2) I do not think changing PS to a different color would make a sufficient difference.

Banning 4 stars from PVP would be an outstanding way to make people never buy 4 star covers ever again haha.

I agree that Xforce and Thor need to be brought down a little bit. They are insanely strong right now and, if the recent 4 stars they have releaed (Elektra and Starlord) are any indication, they will remain king and queen of PVP for the foreseeable future.

However, I think the only thing that really needs to be altered is AP costs.

As you said, Xforce is just so damn fast. 8 green for Xforce and 11 black for SS are just...they are the most efficiently priced ability in those two colors.

And 4hor is almost as fast. Power Surge is a 3 match ability and Smite is a 3 match + 1 ability.

That is 19 AP for an instant kill for 1 character and a 4 turn stun for another. That kind of efficiency makes even 1 cascade terrifying.

If the respective prices for Xforce, SS, PS and Smite were something like 10, 13, 12 and 12 I think they would be perfectly balanced and Starlord and Nick would have a shot at competing with them.

Unknown

Maybe they could just for PVP, make their levels capped to 166 and skills costs 1ap more each, might balance it out more.

Unknown

jimstarooney wrote:

thats right, they are 4 stars so should be much better than 3 stars.even if a character is maxed in their own event 249 shouldnt be better than 270.a lot goes into maxing a 4 star and players that go through the procedure should be rewarded for it.and they are beatable,i beat a full blade/bthor/xf team yesterday with a 100 blade/hood/cmags.

Exactly! A lot goes into maxing 4 stars. I maxed my X Force and it took about 3-4 months. Now I'm working on my Fury, which will take another 3 months

Unknown

Forgot about this thread. Long discussion with ppl previously mentioned shortened to easy digestion.

Take AP gain from SS for Xforce.

Make 4or blue give only 8 charged tiles and stun for ~2 turns.

Two tweaks, balanced.

SS still one of top 2-3 abilities in game. Damage, board shake up and cripples enemy by removing strongest color ap from their cache and from the board to gain more of it for their cache.

4or - Less chance of stun lock, no auto face melt of PS followed by Smite, but still does a whopping ~8,000 damage.

Unknown

i have said it before 4*'s should have their own lvl of Pvp Bracket no need to nerf them, but move them away from the 3*-1*

Trisul

Flux1281 wrote:

i have said it before 4*'s should have their own lvl of Pvp Bracket no need to nerf them, but move them away from the 3*-1*

That's a weird and awkward solution. It's probably a lot easier if you just nerf them a little, to be just a little better than 3*s.

2gabby

I am certainly for roster diversity but instead of nerfing x-force and lady thor which I have to admit is pretty fun to play with why don't D3 just impose a quota to just one 4* per game in pvp?

Unknown

Trisul wrote:

Flux1281 wrote:

i have said it before 4*'s should have their own lvl of Pvp Bracket no need to nerf them, but move them away from the 3*-1*

That's a weird and awkward solution. It's probably a lot easier if you just nerf them a little, to be just a little better than 3*s.

how so ? the 4* can still use other 3* and under Toons and pvp battle anyone else who wants to use a 4* in their line-up, but 3* and under guys would have their own event were no Toon would be higher than 3*'s
this would help with cover distribution for the 2*-3* guys the 4* event would give different rewards since that would be a high lvl competiton

ronin_san

I don't want any 4* neuters. I would sooner wait. This will provide many benefits.

Players who played and won covers for xfw are not punished because others lack them. My xfw is still stuck at 2 green, but I have 5 in his black. I use him anyway. It just changes the speed of my fights.

But the motivation to match xfw and 4hor's dominant abilities means d3 releases stronger 4* chars going forward. And if we are all honest, we want more 4hor and less Sue Storm. sue, btw, WILL get boosted. She is worse than 3* good.

So let's try to understand what a 4* character should be when there are a ton out there for comparison. otherwise, we will be complaining about how badly we need xfw buffed.

And we have already been down that road.