*** Iron Fist (Immortal Weapon) ***

Unknown

Wait. Has anyone suggested you play him with Xforce?

If they have, has anyone said that might be good?

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Iron Fist's conversion is insanely overpowered probably because he has no active black to use that black AP. Of course, nobody could possibly imagine pairing him up with the strongest character the game that has the best black skill in the game too. Even without X Force, pairing him up with Black Panther and I don't see any 3* only team that can withstand 2 ROTPs which you can probably get after 10 purple AP, less if you're lucky. A lot of teams would be effectively downed after 1 ROTP when you add IF's considerable attack tile damage.

This is kind of like the original Daken whose Phermone Rage is about as strong as a top tier green skill even though it didn't consume green AP or even required you to match it, because you might unfathomably not have any green powers on your team. Of course no one really did that unless you're going for a Falcon/Daken/pre nerf Magneto team (Blade was not available before Daken was nerfed, and if you're not using pre nerf Magneto your third person is almost certainly someone who has a green power) but that didn't stop him from getting the original version of Phermone Rage.

Also, from the recent Q&A , they've shown that most of them play at the 2-3* transition level at highest. They probably saw Iron Fist as someone who'll go well with Captain Marvel, and weren't really anticipating how OP he'll be at full covers. I'm tempted to say that they probably play tested him mostly at level 40 or with Modern Thor. Can't explain IFoKL otherwise.

Trisul

Playtesting does not seem like a priority for them.

Unknown

daibar wrote:

Also, from the recent Q&A , they've shown that most of them play at the 2-3* transition level at highest. They probably saw Iron Fist as someone who'll go well with Captain Marvel, and weren't really anticipating how OP he'll be at full covers. I'm tempted to say that they probably play tested him mostly at level 40 or with Modern Thor. Can't explain IFoKL otherwise.

I'm guessing they're thinking of someone like Psylocke or Dr. Doom for IF's black partner even though X Force and Black Panther exists. They probably look at the data and say 'well only 2% of players have Black Panther maxed and 0.75% with X Force maxed', never mind that those small % guys will totally dominate their segment with IF. In general, I notice this game seems to assume complete ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought. Espionage seems to be designed assuming you'd be too stupid to make sure OBW can match purple. Pre nerf Phermone Rage seems to assume you won't have an active green. Surgical Strike seems to assume you wouldn't know what the opponent's strongest color is. Maybe that make sense if these characters are only playable in heroics where you might indeed have to field a team of Modern Thor + Iron Fist, but heroic is a very small part of MPQ. Well, I think they assume the average player is as badly developed as a heroic roster selection, and while that might be correct, what about the guy whose roster is indeed developed?

Unknown

I'm betting their rationale is that high level play is already so broken they're not considering it at all. Unfortunately even in the realm of 3*s IF is kinda broken.

Demiurge_Kabir

Whoa, I had no idea the Cyclops Reading List would be so popular! I asked Casey to write the Iron Fist Reading List mostly because that rhymes. Also, because Iron Fist is awesome and you'll wish you had read this when the Netflix series launches.

If you enjoyed the Cyclops one, or are just clueless who Danny Rand is, please enjoy:
http://www.demiurgestudios.com/blog/lik ... g-of-iron/

And to those who just recruited him, congrats!

Trisul

Phantron wrote:

In general, I notice this game seems to assume complete ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought.

Geez, overstatement much?

CrookedKnight

After you finish up the Immortal Iron Fist series ?(you're going to read Immortal Iron Fist, right?!), you may want to check out the Immortal Weapons miniseries. It's light on Danny Rand but it's still great stuff.

Unknown

McDongals wrote:

I'm betting their rationale is that high level play is already so broken they're not considering it at all. Unfortunately even in the realm of 3*s IF is kinda broken.

Nah, sentry would still be here otherwise

The problem is there's no real balance checks -

"Okay Iron Fist is better than 70% of 3*s, and is better than the **** 4*s, let's release him! Did we mention he plays well with X-Force? This totally won't have any bad repercussions!"

"WOW STARLORD IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HIM NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait countdowns did we really think this through?"
"WOW ELEKTRA IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HER NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait traps.....Marketing says we need to push traps."
"WOW GAMORA IS....a character we released DONT YOU WANT HER!??!?!?"

I'm just glad they vaulted those 6 unreleased characters. Deities know they need more time to make sense of the ones we've got.

NorthernPolarity

Trisul wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In general, I notice this game seems to assume complete ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought.

Geez, overstatement much?

I like to think of any new imbalances in the new characters as simply a massive disparity in the developer's vision of the game and the game at a high level of play. The developers clearly just do not have a good idea at how game balance works at a high level of play. Whatever guidelines they're using to balance the characters are just not very good, as you can see from things such as Doc Ock's green being underwhelming (a lot of little things probably added up to the same ability power as a normal ability, but since so many of the little things are situational and don't matter, it needed to do more than the individual parts themselves) Elektra's red being extremely underwhelming (guessing the developers thought that it being a trap tile and hidden somehow meant that it should do less damage even though functionally speaking its irrelevant on offense), and Beast being generally bad (devs probably thought 'hey, this is a cool concept!' even though playtesting and comparisons to any reasonable 3* should have showed how underpowered he was).

Despite this being the case, you can't really say that they have "ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought" as much as it is "ignorance on anything high-level game balance wise that remotely requires thought" (which is still being too harsh on the developers, but is by far a more logical statement). Since MPQ is still alive and kicking, they're obviously prioritizing their work on keeping the game alive in general, which believe it or not, doesn't actually mean having a balanced metagame and catering to the veteran players who care about such things. Their approach to balance seems to be "as long as things aren't massively broken, we aren't in a rush to fix things", and that's not an unreasonable stance to take in the grand scheme of things. Of course this will infuriate the people who care about balance, but what can you do.

NorthernPolarity

raisinbman wrote:

McDongals wrote:

I'm betting their rationale is that high level play is already so broken they're not considering it at all. Unfortunately even in the realm of 3*s IF is kinda broken.

Nah, sentry would still be here otherwise

The problem is there's no real balance checks -

"Okay Iron Fist is better than 70% of 3*s, and is better than the **** 4*s, let's release him! Did we mention he plays well with X-Force? This totally won't have any bad repercussions!"

"WOW STARLORD IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HIM NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait countdowns did we really think this through?"
"WOW ELEKTRA IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HER NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait traps.....Marketing says we need to push traps."
"WOW GAMORA IS....a character we released DONT YOU WANT HER!??!?!?"

I'm just glad they vaulted those 6 unreleased characters. Deities know they need more time to make sense of the ones we've got.

Iron Fist being better than 70% of 3*s would still be balanced, since at least 30% of 3*s would still be playable in that case. The problem is that if you have BP on your roster, IF becomes better than LazyThor, and if LazyThor is considered too powerful in 3* land (which he is since in an xorless world, hes easily the best character out there), then you have a balance problem on your hands. Of course if your stance on balance is "well IF is worse than XF / GT then I don't care", then IF is perfectly fine, but that's a pretty terrible way to go about things imo.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

raisinbman wrote:

McDongals wrote:

I'm betting their rationale is that high level play is already so broken they're not considering it at all. Unfortunately even in the realm of 3*s IF is kinda broken.

Nah, sentry would still be here otherwise

The problem is there's no real balance checks -

"Okay Iron Fist is better than 70% of 3*s, and is better than the **** 4*s, let's release him! Did we mention he plays well with X-Force? This totally won't have any bad repercussions!"

"WOW STARLORD IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HIM NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait countdowns did we really think this through?"
"WOW ELEKTRA IS SO GOOD WOW 4* CMON TOP 50 PRIZE GET HER NOW SEASON REWARDS!!!!!!! Oh wait traps.....Marketing says we need to push traps."
"WOW GAMORA IS....a character we released DONT YOU WANT HER!??!?!?"

I'm just glad they vaulted those 6 unreleased characters. Deities know they need more time to make sense of the ones we've got.

Iron Fist being better than 70% of 3*s would still be balanced, since at least 30% of 3*s would still be playable in that case. The problem is that if you have BP on your roster, IF becomes better than LazyThor, and if LazyThor is considered too powerful in 3* land (which he is since in an xorless world, hes easily the best character out there), then you have a balance problem on your hands. Of course if your stance on balance is "well IF is worse than XF / GT then I don't care", then IF is perfectly fine, but that's a pretty terrible way to go about things imo.

I was slightly underplaying it. Iron Fist could very well be the 3*/4*MagStorm combined w/ XForce. I just really doubt D3 cares unless it gets to the point of Sentry-Bombing.

D3 only cares about emergency buffs/nerfs, and everything else is being rolled out slowly(see: characters being fixed, etc.)

JamieMadrox

Stickied for your pleasure.

stowaway

Phantron wrote:

I'm guessing they're thinking of someone like Psylocke or Dr. Doom for IF's black partner even though X Force and Black Panther exists.

Luke Cage. They saw two characters with upcoming Netflix shows that are/ have been partners in the comics, and thought they would make a pair that partnered together in the game. No overlapping active colors; complementary passives giving both attack and defense tiles between them. I think they were so intent on making a cool combo that would excite a lot of comics nerds (including me!), that they forgot to factor in how it would work with other characters with black abilities.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In general, I notice this game seems to assume complete ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought.

Geez, overstatement much?

I like to think of any new imbalances in the new characters as simply a massive disparity in the developer's vision of the game and the game at a high level of play. The developers clearly just do not have a good idea at how game balance works at a high level of play. Whatever guidelines they're using to balance the characters are just not very good, as you can see from things such as Doc Ock's green being underwhelming (a lot of little things probably added up to the same ability power as a normal ability, but since so many of the little things are situational and don't matter, it needed to do more than the individual parts themselves) Elektra's red being extremely underwhelming (guessing the developers thought that it being a trap tile and hidden somehow meant that it should do less damage even though functionally speaking its irrelevant on offense), and Beast being generally bad (devs probably thought 'hey, this is a cool concept!' even though playtesting and comparisons to any reasonable 3* should have showed how underpowered he was).

Despite this being the case, you can't really say that they have "ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought" as much as it is "ignorance on anything high-level game balance wise that remotely requires thought" (which is still being too harsh on the developers, but is by far a more logical statement). Since MPQ is still alive and kicking, they're obviously prioritizing their work on keeping the game alive in general, which believe it or not, doesn't actually mean having a balanced metagame and catering to the veteran players who care about such things. Their approach to balance seems to be "as long as things aren't massively broken, we aren't in a rush to fix things", and that's not an unreasonable stance to take in the grand scheme of things. Of course this will infuriate the people who care about balance, but what can you do.

The team feels like there are two teams. There's one team that thinks X Force is a well-balanced character and then there's another team that thinks Psylocke is a well-balanced character. Now both viewpoints are potentially valid but they obviously cannot coexist. I think the devs fall into the 'ultra casual' trap that a lot of devs do. As in, since they obviously don't play the game at the same level of hardcore compared to its players, they might be inclined to think 'oh it's just a few psychos out there that don't matter', and while it's true at some level, you probably should listen to the psychos that tell you the 2H 24M was pretty nuts even for the crazies, or that being forced to use 2 or 3 possible teams kind of negates any incentive to spend more money in this game.

By the way I mean ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought is about how this game way undervalues any ability that potentially requires some thinking. I'm pretty sure when they made Surgical Strike they didn't know what an enemy's strongest color is during their own play testing and they didn't have a guy writing down tiebreakers for all the possible scenarios. If you didn't study this ability in depth, then in a typical DA event it's pretty much 'either green or purple' at a glance, and given purple is weakly covered in most cases, this might not seen so strong. Of course eventually people do figure out all the tiebreakers and if it's going to be on purple you'll just bring someone who can cover purple (Loki, Deadpool, etc). Magnetic Field is another good example. They probably thought players are going to use it like how computer do, just put two in some random location for a small amount of protect ability, because it'd take some time to analyze (not very much, mind you) to put down 2 blue tiles anywhere to form another match 5. Iron Fist's ability only makes sense if they think it is possible that people will not pair him up with the best black user they have, and again that's setting an awfully low standard for intelligence there. And maybe the 'average' player is really that stupid, but you can't make things that dummy proof and expect the game to not fall apart on the high end.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Trisul wrote:

Phantron wrote:

In general, I notice this game seems to assume complete ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought.

Geez, overstatement much?

I like to think of any new imbalances in the new characters as simply a massive disparity in the developer's vision of the game and the game at a high level of play. The developers clearly just do not have a good idea at how game balance works at a high level of play. Whatever guidelines they're using to balance the characters are just not very good, as you can see from things such as Doc Ock's green being underwhelming (a lot of little things probably added up to the same ability power as a normal ability, but since so many of the little things are situational and don't matter, it needed to do more than the individual parts themselves) Elektra's red being extremely underwhelming (guessing the developers thought that it being a trap tile and hidden somehow meant that it should do less damage even though functionally speaking its irrelevant on offense), and Beast being generally bad (devs probably thought 'hey, this is a cool concept!' even though playtesting and comparisons to any reasonable 3* should have showed how underpowered he was).

Despite this being the case, you can't really say that they have "ignorance on anything that remotely requires thought" as much as it is "ignorance on anything high-level game balance wise that remotely requires thought" (which is still being too harsh on the developers, but is by far a more logical statement). Since MPQ is still alive and kicking, they're obviously prioritizing their work on keeping the game alive in general, which believe it or not, doesn't actually mean having a balanced metagame and catering to the veteran players who care about such things. Their approach to balance seems to be "as long as things aren't massively broken, we aren't in a rush to fix things", and that's not an unreasonable stance to take in the grand scheme of things. Of course this will infuriate the people who care about balance, but what can you do.

I didn't see this post the first time around, I think this sums the whole issue up nicely.

Unknown

Can someone explain why Iron fists attack tile works with strike tiles? Not every character has attack tiles that work with strike tiles.

oh, btw, I like that it works with strike tiles. I just want to confirm it's working as intended and not an oversight before I invest in this character.

Mawtful

Cool. I've been thinking about reading the Fraction/Aja Iron Fist after going through most of Hawkeye (which keeps referencing Iron Fist as a bit of an in-joke). This will be a good excuse to get around to it finally.

Unknown

11 pages of "this guy is too good with xforce". Gotta love message boards.

Unknown

ark123 wrote:

11 pages of "this guy is too good with xforce". Gotta love message boards.

Actually it's deeper than that. We're worried about balance. Do you remember the Sentrybombing days? How warped was the metagame, where above 650-700 points every single team was Sentry/Hood/loaner? We don't want to repeat that. Yes, we've abused Sentrybombing to get our X-forces and 4* Thor, but that wasn't fun, it required no brain and made every single PvP a grinding rush in the final minutes of the brackets. A lot has changed and, due to the changes in the shields, that situation cannot be replicated in full, but honestly, while everyone loves good synergies, nobody wants a game where there is only one choice if you want to place well.