The Top Tier aka 4* Thor and Wolverine

NorthernPolarity

bonfire01 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

You can't honestly say with a straight face that a maxed 4* team lacks that type of advantage over a 3* team. Look at literally every single PvP bracket nowadays: it's all XF / 4or people above 800. 4or / X-Force allows you to push to 1k without shielding or worrying about significant attacks. Try doing that with a Patch / Hulk team above 700: I'm pretty sure every single xor team will target you instantly and hit you for -100 before you can even get 2 fights in. There's a huge advantage in having an xor team defensively for PvP, and it's ridiculous to say that that advantage isn't as strong as the 2->3* advantage. 2*'s let you push to 500, 3*'s let you push to 700. 4*s let you push to 1k+ off of a single shield. Yeah, that Patch/Hulk guy doing one fight a hop can beat your team, but when he's spending 150+ HP for 25 points at 700+ compared to your 1k+ score for 0 HP, it's obvious who has the advantage here.

Just because it didn't have your name in it doesn't mean you don't have to read my genius!!! I will repeat what I said above:

"It's worth bearing in mind that ppl with maxed XForce and 4Thor rosters also almost exclusively happen to be veterans in big guilds who may spend moderately to heavily on the game (even if they don't spend they have more access to HP than ppl starting after them). They were getting top places well before the 4* heroes came out (in there current state) without them due to willingness to invest time, effort and/or money in the game. You can't attribute the fact they are at the top of leaderboards to the "overpowered" nature of those heroes when it is simply a continuation of the status quo before those heroes even came out."

Your argument misrepresents the reason IMO. Also there is more than one way to avoid getting hit in PvP and the fact it is possible to make use of node lag to climb late doesn't make the heroes your using unblanaced. Also NO-ONE with a XF-Thor team who isn't above my score is skipping me at 1k points IF they can see I have those points. Also you can only push to 1k AT THE END of the even by using node lag to your advantage. Push to 1k (in fact over 650) early and those points are all being taken.

The point still stands that an experienced player with a 3* team just simply can't reach the points that we are able to with comparable amounts of HP. Yes, the players who were at the top are still at the top, but that is due to a combination of having the best team in the metagame on top of whatever skill that they may have. If your argument is true, and xf / 4or did not actually represent a significant advantage, then we should be seeing skilled players utilize 3* rosters to get the same placements as we are using comparable HP costs, but instead we're seeing hoards of xf/4or less players complain about the 270 wall, and virtually no 3* rosters in the top 5 for any meaningful PvEs.

bonfire01 wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

My mistake on not clarifying earlier, I'm saying that roster diversity will occur when BOTH of these things happen (nerfs on XF / 4or) and buffs on 4*s / new 4*s. Just as a thought experiment, you tell me how you would buff Fury or Elektra to a point where you would even CONSIDER using them over 4or. I wasn't exaggerating earlier with the 8k AoE stuff, I'm pretty sure Fury would have to look like this before he is a viable alternative to 4or:
Demolition - 10 AP, 16k damage.
Avengers Assemble - 5k AoE damage, 3k single target damage, stun, etc.
Escape Plan - 10 AP - 6k damage.

These numbers just seem too high and ridiculous to even warrant considering, which tells me that in order to have a balanced metagame without insane power creep, 4or needs to be nerfed. The point is "what is a reasonable 4* character power level". I would put it at somewhere between Starlord/XF -> 4or is clearly way above that.

Oh come on and stop being silly. Demoltion doesn't need to do 16k to be on a par with 4Thor. She has to spend 19 AP to do 11k ish damage and a 4 turn stun. Why does he have to do way more than a smite's worth of damage, with no prep, for the same AP to be comparable? You're also flippantly exaggerating what you would have to do to his other abilities to be comparable.

If you genuinely believe that 4Thor is equivalent to those numbers........

Because a 4 turn stun that generates 12 charge tiles which fuels more stuns effectively leads to killing the last guy regardless of how much HP he has, effectively making it do infinite damage? I honestly believe that Fury would need those numbers in order to be comparable to 4or: why don't you come up with some numbers for a Fury rebalance and ask the forum whether or not you'd use that over 4or, then?

Unknown

Hey bonfire, I'm just going to point out that any max level 2* team with the level of boosts that a 3* team uses to take down maxed 4* characters is going to destroy those 166 characters. Ares or thor with obw and full iso boosts can and will decimate a pair of 166 characters, and magneto storm will do the same while laughing and taking nearly 0 damage in retaliation barring the most ridiculous of ai cascading. Defensive wins are never going to be regular even fighting up a tier when the power discrepancy is well documented. Thought that should be said.

Unknown

Just to throw my hat into the ring:

In order for me to use Nick over 4hor (in a theoretical discussion, since I don't have either sufficiently leveled), his abilities would likely have to be something like this:

Avengers Assemble: Lower cost to 11 or 12. Reduce the requirements to 3 for each color, rather than 5.
Demolition: 2.2k per bomb (Total of 15.4k), 1k if I match it.
Escape Plan: 10AP. I can place the countdown tile.

His costs are too high for him to be scary at all on defense. I've never ever seen the computer get off more than a base cost avengers assemble. His demolition will need to take down 4hor singlehandedly in order for it to be worth removing 4hor from my defensive line up.

Even if all these changes were made, I'd still hesitate to use Nick Fury over 4hor simply because he is so unintimidating on defense.

I've mentioned this in other threads before, but the Xforce/4hor team isn't so oppressive because it's a good offensive team. Sure, offense is great. You want to kill people fast, easy and without taking much damage in return.

But the real strength of that team is that you can climb in the 800s to 1000s without having to worry about coming out of a match to find you've been hit 5 times in the span of one match of yours. I've seen people in my alliance sit, comfortably, at around 900 without being shielded and it has not been a problem for them.

Not only is this huge for saving HP. But it makes your scoring threshold incredibly higher.

And if I were to give up that defensive blanket, I'd need a LOT of offense in return from Nick Fury.

Unknown

@NorthernPolarity

I presume you mean top 5 of any meaningful PvP rather than PvE... either way not totally true. I've seen ppl without usable 4*s in the top 5 of PvE (Starlord event being the best example since 2/5 of my bracket top 5 didn't have a hero over 166) and occasionally in PvP, although i'll agree generally it's dominated by 4*s HOWEVER, your assertion proves nothing. I am saying the same PLAYERS are in the top 5 and they are. You're saying the reason is x,y,z and that's simply opinion. I am confident that, if everyone had the same rosters, the same people would be top 5.

I am also fairly confident that if the crewsaders had their XForce and 4Thor removed for an event they would still come first.

The point of what i'm saying is... although they represent an advantage over 3* heroes it is not a unsurmountable advantage. It does not represent a difference that suggests they need rebalancing because it is still not as great as 2* to 3*.

Regarding Nick...

Increase max health to 12k
Demolition makes 2 more traps and have total damage at max around 9-10k
Avengers assembles loses it's secondary AP requirements and you place the crit tiles
Escape plan places a strike tile rather than a CD to make a strike tile

That would probably be enough for him to be an alternative option because he would be slightly weaker on offence but a chunk better on defence (where 4Thor is something of a liability).

@Nightmanflock

I use 3*s for early climbing in PvP and 2* teams never (or at least almost never, I can't remember it happening but may have been the odd occasion) take any points off of me. Also the claim about stormneto laughing and taking zero damage would require using +3 to all boosts along with +3 blurple and having a very fortunate board. When I have 2x166s and a levelled featured it takes a LOT of wind storms to down it and by natural progression of play the board becomes increasingly purple and blue poor as you consistantly choose to match them.

@Onimus

If I have Xforce + 4Thor + decent levelled (often maxed) featured on defence and leave them then I will end up settling at a score of 650-750 (depends how useful the featured is and generally be sub 700), no way would I sit at 900 and not lose points. Even if I was in the higher scoring slices.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

@Onimus

If I have Xforce + 4Thor + decent levelled (often maxed) featured on defence and leave them then I will end up settling at a score of 650-750 (depends how useful the featured is and generally be sub 700), no way would I sit at 900 and not lose points. Even if I was in the higher scoring slices.

You must be in some rough shards then, because in the last two PVPs, I've only had 166 Hood, 245 Xforce and max featured character and I settled at 800. I didn't even need to shield until I hit 850.

I mean, yes, if you stay unshielded for the entire PVP, you'll get hit in the last 3 hours. Everyone does.

But at 11 hours or 7 hours or any interval that doesn't correspond to the 3/8/3/8 shielding structure, you can sit unshielded at around 850 to 900 with a Thorverine team without much fear of being demolished immediately to the tune of an attack per minute.

But, disregarding the numbers, the defensive power of Xforce 4hor is far beyond anything Nick Fury could ever offer unless his abilities are actually made to be dangerous, rather than a minor inconvenience.

Phaserhawk

To me a simple nerf to X-Force would be that instead of getting the AP from the board, he just steals what he took from the enemy.

Say they have 6 Green AP but there is 10 Green Tiles on the board. X-Force still blows up the 10 tiles an takes their 6 AP, but he gets the 6 AP not the 10. He's still doing the damage, just not getting crazy AP amounts and sometimes could end up with more AP.

If I was to nerf 4hor, I would start very simple, like just have blue stun 3 turns instead of 4 or remove maybe 50-100 off of the Smite tile damage.

As for Fury.

Avengers Assemble. Get rid of the AP Threshold's entirely and just have the covers represent the power
Demolition--increase the damage a little, but it's about right.
Escape Plan--You place the tile and drop it to 9AP

In the end though, if you dropped 4hor's health to say 12K she becomes far less threating. I think people are forgetting the power of her 16K health.

NorthernPolarity

bonfire01 wrote:

@NorthernPolarity

I presume you mean top 5 of any meaningful PvP rather than PvE... either way not totally true. I've seen ppl without usable 4*s in the top 5 of PvE (Starlord event being the best example since 2/5 of my bracket top 5 didn't have a hero over 166) and occasionally in PvP, although i'll agree generally it's dominated by 4*s HOWEVER, your assertion proves nothing. I am saying the same PLAYERS are in the top 5 and they are. You're saying the reason is x,y,z and that's simply opinion. I am confident that, if everyone had the same rosters, the same people would be top 5.

I am also fairly confident that if the crewsaders had their XForce and 4Thor removed for an event they would still come first.

The point of what i'm saying is... although they represent an advantage over 3* heroes it is not a unsurmountable advantage. It does not represent a difference that suggests they need rebalancing because it is still not as great as 2* to 3*.

So basically, what your saying is that the game is balanced because the crewsaders can pay their way to victory? Lets go with your example of "the crewsaders had their XF / GT removed, then they'll still come first". How would they do that? Well, Hulk / Patch lets people fight xor, so let's say that they all run Patch / Hulk. Since they're running Patch / Hulk, they're basically kill on sight for any XForce team, meaning that once they get above 700 points, they can't do more than one fight before getting sniped. So lets say that they push to 1k, a score reasonable enough for first or top 5. 300 points at 25 points a hop (they're hopping against each other because they need to push early and have no point targets) equates to 12 fights. Alternating between 3 / 8 hour shields, we have this totaling 1650 HP. So for the exorbitant amount of 1.6k HP, they can compete with 4*s. That is your advantage over 3* characters. It's absolutely ridiculous to claim that you don't have a huge advantage over people with 3*s, when you can get top 5 in PvP without a single shield, compared to them having to do shield rotations and spend insane amounts of HP to achieve the same score. Mind you that my earlier post distinctly mentioned "competitive at a comparable cost".

Secondly, you are again missing my main point. This isn't about making the 3* characters have a fighting chance with the 4*s. I'm arguing that they should be nerfed so that we can actually have greater diversity at the 4* level without completely rendering 50% boosted 3*s obsolete. No one can argue that LadyThor is miles better than any single 3* character boosted even 50%. I think everyone would argue that promoting roster diversity is a GOOD thing, and that the PvP tournaments that feature a particular boosted 3* should have people thinking about what team of 4*s they should bring to best compliment the 3*. At LadyThor's current power level, she's so good that you don't even care about the 3* at all: if all the 4*s were buffed to LadyThor tier, you just bring your two best 4*s and call it a day. A much better system would be for you to actually consider the strengths of the 3* character and pick your 4* team based off of that, which can't happen unless a 50% boosted 3* actually matters, which just straight up isn't the case because characters as strong as LadyThor exist.

Unknown

Some of the 3*s can actually hang with Thor/X Force especially if they take a small nerf but that's only if those guys are also already at level 166. With the pace characters get released and an emphasis on the far more expensive 4*s, it is not realistic to keep even strong 3*s like Luke Cage max leveled for even the strongest players let alone anyone else. In this sense roster diversity is already a lost cause because your 3* is likely to get more diluted as time goes on, and if they're weak enough as the featured character you'll just ignore trying to build anything around them and you'll still go with the two strongest characters overall. It doesn't matter if it's currently X Force/Thor and later it becomes Iron Patriot/whatever, it's still the same thing. The only character I can think of where it's remotely feasible to build around instead of just taking your best two would be Falcon since while boosted he adds a rather ridiculous amount of match damage so you can take Daken instead of your usual second best guy. But again, that's only possible if you already have Falcon maxed. Otherwise, a level 100-110 Falcon + 50% level is just a max level 3* and it's not someone you'd drop your usual strongest 2 characters to change strategy on.

RemoDestroyer

I think I'm going to agree with much of what bonfire01 has said. I think X-Force and Thor are fine. The other 4*s may not even be a problem. The game very likely only needs more 4*s. There are only seven now.

Why should the 4*s be balanced? The 3*s and 2*s aren't. 3*s ranges from Thor to Beast and 2*s ranges from Thor/Ares/Black Widow to Bullseye/Moonstone/Bagman.

I also think as a class 4*s should be significantly better than 3*. Not only do they cost a lot more to cover and level but by giving * classifications they are literally out of the 3* league.
With boosts 2*s can play against 3*s in PvP but you wouldn't want to. Once you have a decent number of well covered and leveled 3*s are you really playing with 2*s any more? Boosted 3*s can also hang with 4*s but is also not an ideal situation.

As far as seeing diversity of characters at higher level pvp it would be reasonable to see mostly the games better characters which now would be 4* characters and then only seeing the best of those. I do occasionally see Nick Fury and Devil Dino at higher levels and expect to see more of Invisible Woman soon.

It probably should also be said I have a bias because I recently started using X-Force/Thor in PvP and I don't want it getting changed any time soon unless it's because I added a new kick **** 4*.

ronin_san

Phantron wrote:

Some of the 3*s can actually hang with Thor/X Force

Can. Yep. And you have to play smart.

Phantron wrote:

roster diversity is already a lost cause

I want to cut in there, and key in on the point of the whole paragraph. Roster Diversity is a lost cause. FACT. FFS, man. People use winners because they want to win without paying. And no amount of roster diversity will change the fact that a winning group will have a bunch of "oh, I'm using that group too" followers. Suddenly we're back to square one.

because your

Phantron wrote:

3* is likely to get more diluted as time goes on

Well, the Devs have stated we're in a 3-4* transition, so it stands to reason that we'll be discussing "which 3* to sell off much in the same way that we trivialize 2*'s except for buffed, requirement events.


,

Phantron wrote:

and if they're weak enough as the featured character you'll just ignore trying to build anything around them and you'll still go with the two strongest characters overall. It doesn't matter if it's currently X Force/Thor and later it becomes Iron Patriot/whatever, it's still the same thing.

Winners gonna win with winning teams. Even with roster diversity, we'll be min-maxing to ensure our greatest chance of winning. Roster Diversity is lesson in futility.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

So basically, what your saying is that the game is balanced because the crewsaders can pay their way to victory? Lets go with your example of "the crewsaders had their XF / GT removed, then they'll still come first". How would they do that? Well, Hulk / Patch lets people fight xor, so let's say that they all run Patch / Hulk. Since they're running Patch / Hulk, they're basically kill on sight for any XForce team, meaning that once they get above 700 points, they can't do more than one fight before getting sniped. So lets say that they push to 1k, a score reasonable enough for first or top 5. 300 points at 25 points a hop (they're hopping against each other because they need to push early and have no point targets) equates to 12 fights. Alternating between 3 / 8 hour shields, we have this totaling 1650 HP. So for the exorbitant amount of 1.6k HP, they can compete with 4*s. That is your advantage over 3* characters. It's absolutely ridiculous to claim that you don't have a huge advantage over people with 3*s, when you can get top 5 in PvP without a single shield, compared to them having to do shield rotations and spend insane amounts of HP to achieve the same score. Mind you that my earlier post distinctly mentioned "competitive at a comparable cost".

Secondly, you are again missing my main point. This isn't about making the 3* characters have a fighting chance with the 4*s. I'm arguing that they should be nerfed so that we can actually have greater diversity at the 4* level without completely rendering 50% boosted 3*s obsolete. No one can argue that LadyThor is miles better than any single 3* character boosted even 50%. I think everyone would argue that promoting roster diversity is a GOOD thing, and that the PvP tournaments that feature a particular boosted 3* should have people thinking about what team of 4*s they should bring to best compliment the 3*. At LadyThor's current power level, she's so good that you don't even care about the 3* at all: if all the 4*s were buffed to LadyThor tier, you just bring your two best 4*s and call it a day. A much better system would be for you to actually consider the strengths of the 3* character and pick your 4* team based off of that, which can't happen unless a 50% boosted 3* actually matters, which just straight up isn't the case because characters as strong as LadyThor exist.

What i'm saying is that XForce and 4Thor are not sufficiently better than 3*s that the Crewsaders couldn't pay AND co-ordinate their way to victory without them. Also it's a bit naive to think maxed XF and 4Thor aren't kill on sight with enough of a score. Once people are in hopping territory they are hitting literally anyone worth the points anyway. Also the time to kill Patch, Hulk and max featured isn't massively different to maxed XoR and maxed featured. Only 8k health difference or there abouts.

As far as the idea of top 5 without a shield.... I might have to give that a go using 3*s before I pass comment. I'll pick a PvP where I have a max featured and give it a go this season and report back.

Secondly you are still missing MY main point. My point is that there is absolutely zero value to having diversity in the 4* tier if they are not sufficiently better than 3* heroes to even merit having a tier. I also don't agree with you regarding boosted 3*s being essentially irrelevant. I have noticed a substantial difference in the number of times I get defensive wins vs XF or XF+4Thor teams depending on who the featured in. Also the rate I get hit by teams in general depending on who the featured hero is.

If your intention is to make the featured hero more important then I am genuinely all for that, but personally think they should be more heavily boosted to achieve the same aim (double level so 6.8k heroes boosted are out of power surge->smite or SS->xforce range). Look at it another way.... do people who Hulk bomb pay any attention to the featured hero (unless it's Hulk I guess) when deciding which heroes to bring? The irrelevance of the featured hero has been an issue far longer than viable 4* heroes have been around.

If your intention is to promote 4* diversity then i'm all for that, but personally think that should be achieved by improving the other 4* heroes and increasing their numbers. If your argument is 4Thor is too good for that to be possible then I would consider reducing charge tiles to 2xAP to make it harder to chain abilities as potentially enough. XF on the other hand I see no reason to touch at all, he is probably not significantly better than some 50% boosted 3* heroes as things stand (obviously a lot better than others but that's an issue of 3* hero variability and particularly whether they scale well at all).

Simply compressing the 4* tier down into a continuation of the 3* tier achieves nothing other than neutering end game progression.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

What i'm saying is that XForce and 4Thor are not sufficiently better than 3*s that the Crewsaders couldn't pay AND co-ordinate their way to victory without them. Also it's a bit naive to think maxed XF and 4Thor aren't kill on sight with enough of a score. Once people are in hopping territory they are hitting literally anyone worth the points anyway. Also the time to kill Patch, Hulk and max featured isn't massively different to maxed XoR and maxed featured. Only 8k health difference or there abouts.

I understand (or at least, desperately hope) that you're playing devil's advocate here, but this paragraph is just a little ridiculous. Only 8k difference between Patch/Hulk and Thorverine? That is a severe difference. Best case scenario, that's 2 Xforces. That's 16 additional AP, or at least 4 to 6 more turns, probably more. And that isn't taking into account Thor's stun, which can be hard to work around based on your available matches when she hits 9 blue, and it assumes that Thorverine will go as quietly as Hulk Patch, which they won't. Xforce Thor causes so much more cascading, pain, AP drain, stuns and deaths than Patch Hulk, it's ridiculous to say it is even fairly equivalent in terms of time and effort.

I agree with your overall statement that 4 stars do need to be considerably better than 3 stars in order to justify the next transitional step.

But even with the existing 4 stars, we aren't even close to that step being uniform. Xforce and Thor are obviously worth investing ISO in.
Nick and Starlord are questionable. They have about the equivalent impact as a decent 3 star. So if you like them, they are a marginally good investment in ISO.
But Invisible Woman, Elektra and Devil Dino are all a waste of 430k ISO. They don't improve your standing in PVP at all and are arguably worse than a vast majority of 3 star characters.

So until they are balanced or additional powerful 4 stars are added, yes Thor and Xforce are overpowered.

If you've ever played other competitive games before, you're familiar with the term "power creep."
And your suggestion of improving the other 4 star characters and increasing their numbers would be a classic example of power creep.

When balancing a game, you eliminate the outliers, you don't bring everything else up to match the outliers.
They did it with Ragnarok, Spiderman, Magneto and Sentry. I don't expect them to stop cutting down the outlier any time soon. It is a much more healthy way of balancing a game.

I remember when Sentry was talking about being nerfed, people were saying others should just be buffed up to match him, rather than nerfing him.
Could you imagine if every single character could kill the entire team in 4 turns?
The game would quickly become meaningless.

Unknown

@ Ominus

We were discussing whether someone with a max XForce and 4Thor would skip another max XForce/4Thor/featured for a given number of points where they would hit a max Patch/Hulk/featured. If you are using maxed Xforce+4Thor then 8k extra health is NOT a big deal at all. The difference between downing 38kish and 30kish health (assuming 6.8k pre buffed featured) is really not a lot.

I know in general terms 8k health takes some getting through, but not what we were talking about (specifically talking about the differences between using 4*s and 3*s).

NorthernPolarity

bonfire01 wrote:

@ Ominus

We were discussing whether someone with a max XForce and 4Thor would skip another max XForce/4Thor/featured for a given number of points where they would hit a max Patch/Hulk/featured. If you are using maxed Xforce+4Thor then 8k extra health is NOT a big deal at all. The difference between downing 38kish and 30kish health (assuming 6.8k pre buffed featured) is really not a lot.

I know in general terms 8k health takes some getting through, but not what we were talking about (specifically talking about the differences between using 4*s and 3*s).

I feel like we're talking about two different things because your response still doesn't make sense at all. Maybe give a concrete example instead? I'm thinking of this exact scenario
700 points - do you attack Patch / Hulk ? Do you attack xor?
725 points - Do you attack Patch / Hulk ? Do you attack xor?

Obviously as the point totals rise you'll hit anyone, but if I'm in a standard PvP looking for targets at 700 points with an hour left, why would I attack an xor team at 750 when I can find a Patch / Hulk team for the same amount? It's like your entire argument is based off of "oh, patch/hulk vs xor at 1500, doesn't matter", but the whole point I was trying to make is that in the INBETWEEN point totals of like 700-1000, if you're pushing at 800 points, Patch/Hulk is going to get sniped -300 in the last 10 minutes compared to the xor team pushing who will get sniped say -50 at best. Maybe it's the fact that if you have xor, Patch/Hulk vs xor doesn't matter, but a lot of people do point shopping at high point totals, since it seems incredibly inefficient to hit a maxed xor team when theres much easier targets at the same point totals. Again, back to the 800 point example, I'm skippin all the xors I see that give 30 points because there are 30 point LazyThor / Hulk teams available just the same.

I still don't understand if it's your playstyle of pushing and shielding early that's making you give these statements, but they seem completely out of touch with what's actually going on at the end of PvP events at these point totals. Maybe its because you think that "oh, if I stay unshielded early in PvP it doesn't matter what team I run if I'm at 800 points because I"ll get hit down anyways", but it's crazy to deny that you have no noticeable advantage going from 3->4* compared to 2->3*. Here's a test. Push up to 800 with xor. Now push up to 800 with Patch/Hulk. See where you get attacked down to. Patch Hulk? Probably 500. xor? 700. There's your advantage.

bonfire01 wrote:

Secondly you are still missing MY main point. My point is that there is absolutely zero value to having diversity in the 4* tier if they are not sufficiently better than 3* heroes to even merit having a tier. I also don't agree with you regarding boosted 3*s being essentially irrelevant. I have noticed a substantial difference in the number of times I get defensive wins vs XF or XF+4Thor teams depending on who the featured in. Also the rate I get hit by teams in general depending on who the featured hero is.

If your intention is to make the featured hero more important then I am genuinely all for that, but personally think they should be more heavily boosted to achieve the same aim (double level so 6.8k heroes boosted are out of power surge->smite or SS->xforce range). Look at it another way.... do people who Hulk bomb pay any attention to the featured hero (unless it's Hulk I guess) when deciding which heroes to bring? The irrelevance of the featured hero has been an issue far longer than viable 4* heroes have been around.

If your intention is to promote 4* diversity then i'm all for that, but personally think that should be achieved by improving the other 4* heroes and increasing their numbers. If your argument is 4Thor is too good for that to be possible then I would consider reducing charge tiles to 2xAP to make it harder to chain abilities as potentially enough. XF on the other hand I see no reason to touch at all, he is probably not significantly better than some 50% boosted 3* heroes as things stand (obviously a lot better than others but that's an issue of 3* hero variability and particularly whether they scale well at all).

Simply compressing the 4* tier down into a continuation of the 3* tier achieves nothing other than neutering end game progression.

I repeat my original argument: I do not want a drastic nerf of 4* characters down to 3* levels. I want a nerf on the clearly overpowered 4*s so that we aren't playing a game thats just 100% dominated by 4*s. Now that I've had time to think about it more, I think X-Force does not warrant a nerf right now: it's 4or that is the problem. X-Force is strong compared to a 3*, but we don't know how powerful he truly is because 4or is just too damn good. In mohawks tournament for instance, mohawk / 4or / loki is going to be better than xf / 4or / mohawk. Mohawk and xforce conflict directly, and mohawk is good enough at fueling 4or. See look, team diversity. Caps PvP? XF / 4or / Cap and it isn't close. 4or is just omnipresent, and too good to not use in any PvP.

My new proposed nerf: 4or surge -> level 5 reduced to 3 turn stun and 8 charge tiles generated, and smite reduced in damage such that a surge + smite = 9k damage maxed. It's basically impossible for people to complain about this nerf because they'll look like idiots if they do. This changes NOTHING about how 4or plays, and retains her position as the top of the ladder. But she will be unable to one shot an X-Force now, and her power level will be a lot closer to balanced. The nerf is safe since people can't complain, and it creates a power level that is much closer to what a 4* should be (somewhere between fury and xforce).

X-Force: left unchanged. We need to see the meta after 4or nerf to figure this out.

morph3us

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Here's a test. Push up to 800 with xor. Now push up to 800 with Patch/Hulk. See where you get attacked down to. Patch Hulk? Probably 500. xor? 700. There's your advantage.

I can attest to the first part of this. If I push up to 700-800 with two maxed 166s (3* Thor/BP in my instance, since I'm still working on Hulk), I'll get pushed back down to the mid 500s in the last three hours of the tournament, without shielding, unless I have a maxed featured character. In the majority of the time prior to the last three hours of the tournament, my natural equilibrium point where defensive wins and losses more or less cancel out is just below 600, with that team.

Unknown

People unreasonably skip or fight certain characters and that shouldn't be part of the balance. There was a time where Hulk by himself was considered to be a deterrent, during the days where you had pre nerf Spiderman and Magneto! Thor gives you a pretty decent defense in a shield hop situation since she has a ton of HPs and that's pretty much the only thing that can somewhat slow down a top team with boosts, but other than that she's not an especially hard matchup to defeat for anyone who can otherwise defeat X Force. Once X Force is dealt with (and if you can't deal with X Force then Thor doesn't come into the picture either, as you'd just lose to any X Force team) you literally only have to defend red and you'd never lose the fight. I'm pretty sure I have less losses that can be solely attributed to Thor compared to The Hood, and my losses to Thor can only be summed up as incredibly dumb like letting myself get Smited 3 times in a row, while The Hood certainly doesn't need you to do anything stupid for him to work his magic. For whatever reason Thor is a huge mental block for most players to overcome in PvP, but that's not because she's really that hard to beat in PvP so you can't use the resulting scores as an example of how powerful she is. Remember for a long time, people didn't think The Hood was that strong, even though The Hood is a terrible mismatch to attack if you're not using him, especially during the pre X Force days. Nobody can possibly win defense more than 50% of the time, so if you've a character that people think is tough that is as good as having a tough character because anyone who attacks you with >50% win rate is likely a net loss of points in the long run, but people's perception does not make the character. Hulk was never a strong defense character even if he was always thought of as one for a very long time.

Unknown

we can solve this issuse with 2 pvp events running at the same time Event 1 would be you can use any 4* and under Character this is for you Top guys with 270 Xforce and GThor, to fight against guys on your own lvl

Event 2 would be 3* and under event This would be for the people who are still in transition with their 2* and 3*

this would give people options for were they stand for pvp no new player wants to be stuck doing Pve only and then only being able to pvp in the same events with maxed or closed to max 4* players, this would solve some of the problems with pvp and balance the 4* tire would now be able to be balance around each other because they would have there own Event to work in.

2*-3* players would have their own Event and covers can be distributed much better for these players

I see any reson you guys would be against this no nerf's just more options

Deathclaw

Of course you'll see nothing but 4*s...they are the strongest tier and should be the strongest in the game.

How many of you with 3* rosters run your 2*s in PvP? As they introduce more 4*s, you'll see more diversity at the top, the same way as you see diversity increased in 3*s. A while back, I sat there with my two star roster lamenting that every fight was against Patchneto. Every. Single. One. It later expanded to LThor, Sentry, Black Panther, etc.

All of those guys destroyed my 2*s, and it was difficult for me to compete. Should they have been nerfed to where my 2* roster was at? Thats what you're asking for now...that the strongest characters of the highest tier be nerfed to the highest power of the next lowest tier. That invalidates the 4* as a tier increase. At that point, bring them to 2*s, then 1*s, etc.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I feel like we're talking about two different things because your response still doesn't make sense at all. Maybe give a concrete example instead? I'm thinking of this exact scenario
700 points - do you attack Patch / Hulk ? Do you attack xor?
725 points - Do you attack Patch / Hulk ? Do you attack xor?

Obviously as the point totals rise you'll hit anyone, but if I'm in a standard PvP looking for targets at 700 points with an hour left, why would I attack an xor team at 750 when I can find a Patch / Hulk team for the same amount? It's like your entire argument is based off of "oh, patch/hulk vs xor at 1500, doesn't matter", but the whole point I was trying to make is that in the INBETWEEN point totals of like 700-1000, if you're pushing at 800 points, Patch/Hulk is going to get sniped -300 in the last 10 minutes compared to the xor team pushing who will get sniped say -50 at best. Maybe it's the fact that if you have xor, Patch/Hulk vs xor doesn't matter, but a lot of people do point shopping at high point totals, since it seems incredibly inefficient to hit a maxed xor team when theres much easier targets at the same point totals. Again, back to the 800 point example, I'm skippin all the xors I see that give 30 points because there are 30 point LazyThor / Hulk teams available just the same.

I still don't understand if it's your playstyle of pushing and shielding early that's making you give these statements, but they seem completely out of touch with what's actually going on at the end of PvP events at these point totals. Maybe its because you think that "oh, if I stay unshielded early in PvP it doesn't matter what team I run if I'm at 800 points because I"ll get hit down anyways", but it's crazy to deny that you have no noticeable advantage going from 3->4* compared to 2->3*. Here's a test. Push up to 800 with xor. Now push up to 800 with Patch/Hulk. See where you get attacked down to. Patch Hulk? Probably 500. xor? 700. There's your advantage.

Not everyone pushes and plays in the last hour of PvP. In fact, since we are discussing top scores when talking about XoR i'll say that, on average, that makes up less than one person in the final top 5 of events and maybe just over 1 person in the top 10. MOST people shield to protect their scores and avoid playing the last hour. ALSO.... you are not scoring heavily by late pushing because of your heroes being a defensive deterrant, you're doing it because of node score update lag. Attempting to balance heroes around what is something between a bug, a bad game design or an unfortunate necessity to save data usage is foolish.

What I am getting at though is the following. If I am skipping through nodes to find someone to hit, whether it be to climb to my first shield OR to to hop and a 30 point target appears then I hit it. If it's maxed XoR + featured I hit it. If it's Patch hulk I hit it... So if there is a Patch + Hulk in there then I don't pick on it because I don't see it. Why would I skip away a VERY EASILY winnable node (4Thor is deeply terrible on defence, ESPECIALLY vs another 4Thor) and risk having to dump a load more ISO to find it again? Just cause there MIGHT be a Hulk/Patch out there? Why bother when the practical difference to me is negligable. In fact hitting a 4Thor target means I can let the ai get blue for me while I grab red, let them stun XF or the featured then kill something.

If your argument for nerfing Xforce and 4Thor is based around the last 10 minutes of a PvP which comprises less than 3% of one part of the game..... well ok, I know it's not the only point you're making but when that Patch + Hulk player will have almost certainly shielded unless they're mad it's irrelevant. Also nerfing them because they can save 75Hp an event makes no sense.

NP wrote:

I repeat my original argument: I do not want a drastic nerf of 4* characters down to 3* levels. I want a nerf on the clearly overpowered 4*s so that we aren't playing a game thats just 100% dominated by 4*s. Now that I've had time to think about it more, I think X-Force does not warrant a nerf right now: it's 4or that is the problem. X-Force is strong compared to a 3*, but we don't know how powerful he truly is because 4or is just too damn good. In mohawks tournament for instance, mohawk / 4or / loki is going to be better than xf / 4or / mohawk. Mohawk and xforce conflict directly, and mohawk is good enough at fueling 4or. See look, team diversity. Caps PvP? XF / 4or / Cap and it isn't close. 4or is just omnipresent, and too good to not use in any PvP.

My new proposed nerf: 4or surge -> level 5 reduced to 3 turn stun and 8 charge tiles generated, and smite reduced in damage such that a surge + smite = 9k damage maxed. It's basically impossible for people to complain about this nerf because they'll look like idiots if they do. This changes NOTHING about how 4or plays, and retains her position as the top of the ladder. But she will be unable to one shot an X-Force now, and her power level will be a lot closer to balanced. The nerf is safe since people can't complain, and it creates a power level that is much closer to what a 4* should be (somewhere between fury and xforce).

X-Force: left unchanged. We need to see the meta after 4or nerf to figure this out.

Before there were 4*s we were playing a game much more dominated by 3* heroes than it currently is by 4* heroes.

I'll give credit though for rethinking regarding XForce and i'll also agree that you could make SOME adjustments to 4Thor without wrecking her although, IMO, making charged tiles do 3xdamage but only generate 1AP, or making them do 2x damage and AP instead of 3 would be a better adjustment to test out.

Think of it this way.... 4Thor has all of ONE significant damaging ability. Any change to it drastically adjusts her effectiveness in what is an entirely damage driven meta.

Here is, what I *think* is a compelling argument against your planned change and in favour of mine....

The best 3* example I can think of for similar (I use the term somewhat loosely) abilities to 4Thor is actually mystique. Her shapeshift into masterstroke is a 2 part combo damage dealer which starts with a stun and happily costs the exact same 19AP across 2 different colours.

4Thor at max level does a 4 turn stun into 11749 damage.
Mystique at max does a 2 turn stun (yes I know ppl won't max shapeshift but to compare we'll assume it is, especially since infiltration is a lot better than striking distance!) into 7302 damage

So it's +60% damage, 2 turns longer stun in exchange for no gradual steal and both sides having a shot at bonus AP. Also 4Thor's damage will degrade as charges are matched and Mystique is pretty all or nothing on whether the CD is in a safe place and/or is ignored by the AI.

IMO, that's a not unreasonable increase for 3*-4*. The only issue (IMO) is the way 4Thor can chain attacks through increased charged tile AP gain, hence that being the thing I would target for a change.

By your numbers.....

4Thor 4 turn stun and 9000 damage
Mystique 2 turn stun and 7302 damage

So it's +2 turns of stun and an almighty +23% damage.... that is NOT a tier above..... So if it happened I most certainly can, and would complain.

Unknown

bonfire01 wrote:

Before there were 4*s we were playing a game much more dominated by 3* heroes than it currently is by 4* heroes.

I'll give credit though for rethinking regarding XForce and i'll also agree that you could make SOME adjustments to 4Thor without wrecking her although, IMO, making charged tiles do 3xdamage but only generate 1AP, or making them do 2x damage and AP instead of 3 would be a better adjustment to test out.

Think of it this way.... 4Thor has all of ONE significant damaging ability. Any change to it drastically adjusts her effectiveness in what is an entirely damage driven meta.

Here is, what I *think* is a compelling argument against your planned change and in favour of mine....

The best 3* example I can think of for similar (I use the term somewhat loosely) abilities to 4Thor is actually mystique. Her shapeshift into masterstroke is a 2 part combo damage dealer which starts with a stun and happily costs the exact same 19AP across 2 different colours.

4Thor at max level does a 4 turn stun into 11749 damage.
Mystique at max does a 2 turn stun (yes I know ppl won't max shapeshift but to compare we'll assume it is, especially since infiltration is a lot better than striking distance!) into 7302 damage

So it's +60% damage, 2 turns longer stun in exchange for no gradual steal and both sides having a shot at bonus AP. Also 4Thor's damage will degrade as charges are matched and Mystique is pretty all or nothing on whether the CD is in a safe place and/or is ignored by the AI.

IMO, that's a not unreasonable increase for 3*-4*. The only issue (IMO) is the way 4Thor can chain attacks through increased charged tile AP gain, hence that being the thing I would target for a change.

By your numbers.....

4Thor 4 turn stun and 9000 damage
Mystique 2 turn stun and 7302 damage

So it's +2 turns of stun and an almighty +23% damage.... that is NOT a tier above..... So if it happened I most certainly can, and would complain.

You're forgetting the 10.5K difference in health between the two.

Mystique teams are gifts in PVP.

Thor's health may not be a big deal to you. But for people who don't have maxed Thor/Xforce teams, it is a huge difference.