We are so close to a 'balanced' endgame!

Unknown

Shoot, I got my threads mixed, but I think it's relevant here too.

I agree with the Thor blue and X-Force black nerf (though maybe not the degree), but think there's a danger of over nerfing. I think Rags is great where he is, just needing a 3rd power. They're overvaluing fake healing with Spiderman, but that's something they've done with all healing. It probably more affects weaker players rather than the top tier. X-Force's green is fine, as he's got a weak yellow power and an expensive Black power to compensate.

simonsez

Trisul wrote:

That's a pretty short-sighted view of balance, especially considering that PvE difficulty gets inflated with winfinite in the game.

I didn't see PvE get any easier when CMag could no longer do infinite turns, so why should I have any belief that your "play balance nerfs" would result in easier PvE nodes?

Trisul

simonsez wrote:

I didn't see PvE get any easier when CMag could no longer do infinite turns, so why should I have any belief that your "play balance nerfs" would result in easier PvE nodes?

Other players can chime in here with their own experience, but for me community scaling certainly was toned way down after the CMags nerf.

Unknown

Tough to say. PvE in general seems to give me higher level fights than it used to, and my play style hasn't really changed. This might be due to my having maxed out a few (literally, 2) 4* characters; it's rumored that that messes up your initial fight levels and if that's the case then I would have a harder time fairly evaluating the impact of community scaling.

Just to clarify, though: I've always used the bulk of my roster in PvE and fought my opponents with the weakest team necessary to reliably win (unless I'm going for late-game points at the end of a cycle). I've lost a fair number of nodes because I gambled with a weak, unorthodox, or wounded team. It seems to me that scaling in the wake of CMags and Spidey getting nerfed is no more forgiving than it used to be; my opponent levels appear no lower (and in some cases seem higher). Again, that might be because my initial fight levels are screwed up.

*edited for grammar

NorthernPolarity

simonsez wrote:

Trisul wrote:

That's a pretty short-sighted view of balance, especially considering that PvE difficulty gets inflated with winfinite in the game.

I didn't see PvE get any easier when CMag could no longer do infinite turns, so why should I have any belief that your "play balance nerfs" would result in easier PvE nodes?

I distinctly remember multiple nodes being 395 back in the day of spidey / mags, compared to the maybe one node maxed out at 330 that we get nowadays (395 goon nodes obviously don't count).

simonsez

NorthernPolarity wrote:

I distinctly remember multiple nodes being 395 back in the day of spidey / mags, compared to the maybe one node maxed out at 330 that we get nowadays (395 goon nodes obviously don't count).

Maybe I'm paying the price for success, but I distinctly remember in the PvE that awarded Elektra, all the hard essentials were 395 for me.

rednailz

NorthernPolarity wrote:

rednailz wrote:

Trisul wrote:

rednailz wrote:

I'm so sick of the "nerf xforce and GT" movement.

Wouldn't be much of a game if everyone was alaways the same.

You kind of undermine your own argument there, since it seems like at the top level that everyone IS always the same (XF+GT).

Wouldn't you prefer a game with more diversity in the top tier?

I'm don't necessarily support nerfing XF or GT, but there's no denying that character balance and diversity is good for the game. I'd probably want them to nerf them if there were no new characters to be released ever, but since D3 is committed to creating more 4*, there's always hope that a clear purpose behind 4* power level will emerge.

No Rags used to be top dog- nerfed. Then spiedey - nerfed. Cmags used to be top dog - he got nerfed (and it was necissary and they did a good job) sentry was top dog - he got nerfed into uselessness.

Now it's xforce that needs to be nerfed and when he's nerfed people will scream for whoever's on top to be nerfed, and so on until everyone is "the same" and "fair"

I'd like more diversity at the top tier, easisest and funnest way to do that is fix broken charecters and add new decent thoughtful 4* to compete. Look at how relevant Loki became all of a sudden with a good fixing.

Am I sick of the 270 wall in pvp? yup. less sick of it than the sentry wall, and it's easier to take down than the sentry wall (if you didn't have the right tools for sentry dismantling).

It's touch to balance and organically grow. But I'm not sure if I'm more sick of the xforce/gt always in my way after 700 pts or hearing about how they need to be nerfed. The meta in this game has been more about nerfing than about putting out good balanced charecters. You know what I want more than nerfing xforce? An xforce kiler. There are many powerful beings left in the marvel universe to be good 4*'s that would chew through him and GT pretty easily (although GT should be near the top in meta)

Ah, there is my example of a PTSD victim! Someone who sees the horribleness that saw what happened to Rags / Spideys, and thought to themselves "if nerfing means make the character unplayable, then I don't want to hear the word nerf ever again". The thing you fail to realize is that as a result of all of these nerfs, the 3* metagame is actually (somewhat) balanced. Do you think that buffing everyone to Rags tier where they would win turn 2 solve anything? No... that would make every single character in the game completely OP and take away any fun from the game whatsoever. Look at the 3* metagame right now. Hood / LazyThor are currently a little too good, but look at tier 2 which is very close to power level to tier 1: Cage / BP / Doom / Blade / etc. Do you think this would be even remotely possible if old C. Mags existed? The point was that as a result of all these nerfs, overall game balance got to a point where multiple characters STARTED to become viable. Each subsequent top dog got closer and closer to balance, until we are where we are now with there actually being some sort of semblance of balance in the 3* meta. That's why nerfs are useful.

Your vision of an "X-Force killer" doesn't really work out. How would someone kill X-Force? Well, they'd have to be more powerful than X-Force. So lets make the new guy an X-Force killer: new guy:10k hp, 9AP: 10k damage.
Oh, now we need someone to kill the new guy. new guy 2> 10k hp, 6AP: 10k damage. Oh now we need someone to kill new guy 2... Eventually we power creep so hard that we're seeing turn 1 wins and everything has gone to tinykitty. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea.

Bonfire, I think boosting the featured to 332 would fix the useless featured problem, but at the same time isn't as good of a solution as just lowering the power level of 4*s to somewhere between X-Force and Fury.Based off the current state of the game, you can already see that X-Force / GT are more than 50% better than a 3* character, because so many 3* characters are just HP bags in their featured tournaments as is. 332s make it so that 3* transitioners just have 0 chance of competing as that boosts everything up to a 4* metagame that is XF GT level, which is significantly better than 3* (more than 50%, probably 100%), whereas the alternative would be to nerf X-Force / GT slightly to make the 4* meta into a 50% better than 3* meta, which makes more sense to me. But wait! I said the word "nerf", so people are going to completely ignore the "4*s should be 50% better than 3*s" statement I just said and just reply with "Naw 4*s should be more powerful than 3*. They don't need to be nerfed. I hate nerfs."

I feel my salt levels rising just thinking about this so I will be off now.

NP you poking and things that aren't there and you're taking what I said out of context and inflating it to something it isn't.

Let me make what I was trying to get at crystal clear since you seem to be implying subtext to what I was saying:

This game has suffered horribly in the meta from nerfing cycles. The top tier is always a cylce of nerfing whomever was on top. When do you propose the cycle ends? It's a fallacy of circular logic response. My point - in case it was missed - is that once X-Froce and GT are nerfed they will call for whomever is top dog then to be nerfed. Simple as that. Nerf the whole damn game for all I care, my ONLY point is that it's an endless nerfing cycle in this game, and as we've seen that hasn't balanced things out yet, has it? I'm not saying that those changes didn't need to be made, I was speaking to the overall approach to balancing, and the constant outcries that nerfs are necissary. My point was make them more balanced. Having playing online games for quite some time, I get the nerf / buff cycle and how sometimes it's necissary. But from what I see it seems to ME that a lot of the "nerf" cries are from people who are pissed they got hit with an xforce or SS. Yeah, SS seems overpowered, and could use a little toning down.

As far as an xforce killer goes, you need to be a little more creative. They don't need to have a million hit points and do a million damage thus leading to a power creep to take him out. Daken is a decent example of a small meassure that counters the green matching with strike tiles, but obviously isn't enough. A strategic 4* could easily make a decent fight against xforce but possibly be weak to others. Basically like how most RPG style games work. Heavy is strong against medium but weak against light. Perhaps a Gambit working with GT charged tyles and working with charged abilities, to stun / damage xforce. (poor idea, but I'm on the spot and not into putting good thought to it right now) Perhaps a "beserk" type charecter that after getting hit for more than 3K has a proc that reacts or an ability, or charges an ability (similar to CM) ect, ect. I'm pretty unimperssed with how little imagination you put into a simple suggestion. For a 4* I would say that there will be a power creep, eventually his hit point count will be in the middle, which if keeping in line with "realism" in the MU x-foce is. He's not top tier.

But then again, given the attitude of your post towards mine, I wasn't expecting a constructive conversation. So no point on us continuing this one.

cheers

Trisul

rednailz wrote:

This game has suffered horribly in the meta from nerfing cycles.

Really? I started playing right before true healing got nerfed and MPQ has gotten a LOT better since then. I don't really see any evidence of horrible suffering then. Can you recall some?

rednailz wrote:

But from what I see it seems to ME that a lot of the "nerf" cries are from people who are pissed they got hit with an xforce or SS.

Actually it seems to me that it's more the veterans who are discussing XF/GT nerfs. They all have XF/GT and are probably bored of playing nothing but XF/GT against other XF/GTs.

Phaserhawk

The thing with nerfs is that it's far better to shift the power from skill to skill then drain the character of usefullness.

Let's take our beloved X-Force

A better option is to shift some of his power in green and black to yellow. Perhaps yellow heals less but only a 2CD tile. Maybe it does 10 times the damage if it's destroyed, but to me that's where you need to look first.

If you gave me a scepter and said I'm in charge, balance 4hor and X-Force I would do gentle tweaks to the characters.
X-Force--9AP nothing else
Surgical Strike--does everything but AP it steals comes from the enemy not the board

4hor--make charged tiles 2x the AP instead of 3x the AP
the earlier suggestion of just going onto yellow and red would be bad as Smite does create 4-5 on it's own and if only going on red and yellow you increased the percentage of red and yellow

I'll agree the game is closer, but unless there are just brokenly OP things, I would rather see completely useless characters (IW, Beast, Doc Ock, etc.) get brought up first before others get torn down.

NorthernPolarity

rednailz wrote:

NP you poking and things that aren't there and you're taking what I said out of context and inflating it to something it isn't.

Let me make what I was trying to get at crystal clear since you seem to be implying subtext to what I was saying:

This game has suffered horribly in the meta from nerfing cycles. The top tier is always a cylce of nerfing whomever was on top. When do you propose the cycle ends? It's a fallacy of circular logic response. My point - in case it was missed - is that once X-Froce and GT are nerfed they will call for whomever is top dog then to be nerfed. Simple as that. Nerf the whole damn game for all I care, my ONLY point is that it's an endless nerfing cycle in this game, and as we've seen that hasn't balanced things out yet, has it? I'm not saying that those changes didn't need to be made, I was speaking to the overall approach to balancing, and the constant outcries that nerfs are necissary. My point was make them more balanced. Having playing online games for quite some time, I get the nerf / buff cycle and how sometimes it's necissary. But from what I see it seems to ME that a lot of the "nerf" cries are from people who are pissed they got hit with an xforce or SS. Yeah, SS seems overpowered, and could use a little toning down.

As far as an xforce killer goes, you need to be a little more creative. They don't need to have a million hit points and do a million damage thus leading to a power creep to take him out. Daken is a decent example of a small meassure that counters the green matching with strike tiles, but obviously isn't enough. A strategic 4* could easily make a decent fight against xforce but possibly be weak to others. Basically like how most RPG style games work. Heavy is strong against medium but weak against light. Perhaps a Gambit working with GT charged tyles and working with charged abilities, to stun / damage xforce. (poor idea, but I'm on the spot and not into putting good thought to it right now) Perhaps a "beserk" type charecter that after getting hit for more than 3K has a proc that reacts or an ability, or charges an ability (similar to CM) ect, ect. I'm pretty unimperssed with how little imagination you put into a simple suggestion. For a 4* I would say that there will be a power creep, eventually his hit point count will be in the middle, which if keeping in line with "realism" in the MU x-foce is. He's not top tier.

But then again, given the attitude of your post towards mine, I wasn't expecting a constructive conversation. So no point on us continuing this one.

cheers

Sorry about that, salt levels have calmed down so we can continue this conversation in a more constructed manner. Flashbacks of the nerf 4or thread have gotten me on tilt. As salty as my response was, my main points still, well, had a point there. My point was that the endless nerf cycle is NOT an endless nerf cycle, because the power level got closer and closer to balanced. Let's take a look at what the nerfs actually did:

Ragnarok Nerf - Before: Strongest character was Ragnarok who ended the game literally on turn 1. After: Strongest character was C. Mags / Spidey, who either infinite stunlocked or took infinite turns, but took longer to get there.
Spidey / C. Mags Nerf - After: Strongest character is now LazyThor who actually took a reasonable amount of time to end the game and wasn't broken (although still too good compared to other 3*s)
Sentry Nerf - Sentry was introduced that literally ended the game in 3 turns. Now the metagame is X-Force / GT for 4*s, and LazyThor for 3*s, who end the game in ~7-10 turns and is much more reasonable.

Now you could say "there's no point, the nerfs will just keep on happening!", but any way you look at it, the metagame has changed for the better because of the nerfs. Games aren't just "faceroll with Ragnarok and instawin on turn 1" anymore, and no amount of buffs would have prevented that from happening: the nerfs obviously needed to happen.

When does the cycle end? The cycle ends when the game is actually balanced, which I define as when you don't automatically bring the same two characters to 95% of PvPs even if they completely conflict with the featured character because they are just that good. In the 3* meta, this almost happened. LazyThor obviously dominates the meta, but I can see a situation where if the PvP is Sentry, then you could bring Doom or someone INSTEAD of LazyThor because of color conflicts. This "XF / GT" meta obviously doesn't agree to that, so more things need to be done to fix this.

The deeper answer to my "power creep" suggestion is that LadyThor is NOT at a state where a simple counter character that isn't completely overpowered could counter her. I was actually thinking about someone that could counter her, and the only one I could come up with was:
4* Hulk - Passive - If ANY member of your team gets stunned, spawn an anger tile and drain all of your opponents red AP.

Now, you could release a character like this without breaking the metagame, but it's obscenely inelegant, and frankly just lazy from a design perspective. Instead of trying to buff everyone to obscene amounts of power level or introduce specific, narrow counter characters for LadyThor, the simpler solution seems to just nerf ladythor instead. But again, given all the hate surrounding the term "nerf", I'd be willing to try doing something like buffing Fury to X-Force tier, and then propose the ladythor nerf again once it's painfully obvious that she's actually just overpowered even in the context of the 4* meta.

rednailz

Trisul wrote:

rednailz wrote:

This game has suffered horribly in the meta from nerfing cycles.

Really? I started playing right before true healing got nerfed and MPQ has gotten a LOT better since then. I don't really see any evidence of horrible suffering then. Can you recall some?

rednailz wrote:

But from what I see it seems to ME that a lot of the "nerf" cries are from people who are pissed they got hit with an xforce or SS.

Actually it seems to me that it's more the veterans who are discussing XF/GT nerfs. They all have XF/GT and are probably bored of playing nothing but XF/GT against other XF/GTs.

Yes, it's gotten a lot better since true healing, and I'm all for the true healing move. Here's a current example, you're talking about it right now: xforce was buffed, boom - we're needing another nerf becuase the meta was shaken up. Or Cmags was nerfed, and xforce wasn't too useful, thus leaving sentry to run a muck and control the game for a few months just as patchneedo did. I don't care if you agree at all, it's just an opinion of one person. I don't write algoryithims of the game or get out my abicus when trying to determine who's balnces with what when what happens - it's just an observation. The meta seems to be driven more by nerfing and who needs to be nerfed than the machanics of the game, that's it. That's all, and that's also based off of months on these forums. There's always some one on the hit list to be nerfed. Maybe if they fixed IW and put in a "hold person" type approach it would balance things out a little more.

But my only point was, the meta of this game is 100% based on what team is on top, and they are on top until they get nerfed. It's a cycle. So I would expect once GT and xforce get nerfed there will be some one else on the hit list. I'd love to be proven wrong on my knee-jerk opinion.

In my expierance I'd say it'd be a 50/50. I see countless posts on here from people who are pissed that xforce beat them and they don't have a fully covered one. You're on here a lot, I'm sure it's not a stretch for you to acknowledge that.

Unknown

X Force is not balanced compared to anybody in the game, 3* or 4* or otherwise, so the first question is whether X Force represents the correct power for a 4* or not, because nobody is like him at all. If all 4* are as powerful as him, all games would be effectively decided in two moves, since Surgical Strike + X Force can effectively decide a game. Not end a game, but if your opponent always starts with those two moves for free it'd be awfully hard for you to come back, and conversely if you started with those two moves for free it's awfully hard to screw up.

Now if you look by numbers, 4* have 62% more HP, and considerably less than 62% more effiency in number/AP. Without X Force there isn't even a 4* that is say 50% more effective than a 3* (Thor 3* boosted 50% easily beats Thor 4* in damage efficiency), and for the sake of simplicity we'll say X Force is exactly 62% better even though he's not necessarily 50% better than the top 3*s (e.g. it's generally more efficient to use CotS with a boosted Thor 3* than X Force on green), though he's definitely 62% better than the average 3*s.

So if we calibrate 4*s to 62% more HP/62% more efficiency, this means the featured system literally makes no sense, as you'd forever be stuck using a guy that's 50% more HP/50% more efficiency no matter how much money you spent into the game, so you never get the power you spent on the 4*s beyond the second one. If we move the buff to featured to 100% then at least you get something out of investing in a 3*, but a 100% buff 3* would render almost all other 3* obselete and there used to be a time when it was like that and PvP was more or less just the featured guy going 1on1 against the opposing featured character. If you're not at the 4* level then you'd have nobody else that's remotely a match for a 100% boosted featured 3* so it'd get boring pretty quick. Unless there's a way to only boost featured character 100% for those with maxed 4*s, this isn't a workable solution on the lower end.

I feel that D3 is just very inconsistent on their design philosophy. It is impossible for anyone to say what 4* are intended to be relative to 3* because it really doesn't make sense. They're by design to have 62% more HP and that's a very significant increase so your first inclination might be that they're supposed to be overpowered, except when you look at their number/AP, all but X Force likely loses to the top 3*s, sometimes by a very significant margin since 4* tends to have significant restrictions on how their abilities are use (Star-Lord, Nick-Fury, Elektra). It seems like there are literally two conflicting design philosophy between whoever designed their HPs and abilities. It'd make far more sense if 4* are just say 25% better in both category, which would make them overpowered but acceptable, instead of being significantly overpowered in one category (HP) and arguably underpowered in the other (damage for anyone that isn't X Force).

rednailz

NorthernPolarity wrote:

rednailz wrote:

NP you poking and things that aren't there and you're taking what I said out of context and inflating it to something it isn't.

Let me make what I was trying to get at crystal clear since you seem to be implying subtext to what I was saying:

This game has suffered horribly in the meta from nerfing cycles. The top tier is always a cylce of nerfing whomever was on top. When do you propose the cycle ends? It's a fallacy of circular logic response. My point - in case it was missed - is that once X-Froce and GT are nerfed they will call for whomever is top dog then to be nerfed. Simple as that. Nerf the whole damn game for all I care, my ONLY point is that it's an endless nerfing cycle in this game, and as we've seen that hasn't balanced things out yet, has it? I'm not saying that those changes didn't need to be made, I was speaking to the overall approach to balancing, and the constant outcries that nerfs are necissary. My point was make them more balanced. Having playing online games for quite some time, I get the nerf / buff cycle and how sometimes it's necissary. But from what I see it seems to ME that a lot of the "nerf" cries are from people who are pissed they got hit with an xforce or SS. Yeah, SS seems overpowered, and could use a little toning down.

As far as an xforce killer goes, you need to be a little more creative. They don't need to have a million hit points and do a million damage thus leading to a power creep to take him out. Daken is a decent example of a small meassure that counters the green matching with strike tiles, but obviously isn't enough. A strategic 4* could easily make a decent fight against xforce but possibly be weak to others. Basically like how most RPG style games work. Heavy is strong against medium but weak against light. Perhaps a Gambit working with GT charged tyles and working with charged abilities, to stun / damage xforce. (poor idea, but I'm on the spot and not into putting good thought to it right now) Perhaps a "beserk" type charecter that after getting hit for more than 3K has a proc that reacts or an ability, or charges an ability (similar to CM) ect, ect. I'm pretty unimperssed with how little imagination you put into a simple suggestion. For a 4* I would say that there will be a power creep, eventually his hit point count will be in the middle, which if keeping in line with "realism" in the MU x-foce is. He's not top tier.

But then again, given the attitude of your post towards mine, I wasn't expecting a constructive conversation. So no point on us continuing this one.

cheers

Sorry about that, salt levels have calmed down so we can continue this conversation in a more constructed manner. Flashbacks of the nerf 4or thread have gotten me on tilt. As salty as my response was, my main points still, well, had a point there. My point was that the endless nerf cycle is NOT an endless nerf cycle, because the power level got closer and closer to balanced. Let's take a look at what the nerfs actually did:

Ragnarok Nerf - Before: Strongest character was Ragnarok who ended the game literally on turn 1. After: Strongest character was C. Mags / Spidey, who either infinite stunlocked or took infinite turns, but took longer to get there.
Spidey / C. Mags Nerf - After: Strongest character is now LazyThor who actually took a reasonable amount of time to end the game and wasn't broken (although still too good compared to other 3*s)
Sentry Nerf - Sentry was introduced that literally ended the game in 3 turns. Now the metagame is X-Force / GT for 4*s, and LazyThor for 3*s, who end the game in ~7-10 turns and is much more reasonable.

Now you could say "there's no point, the nerfs will just keep on happening!", but any way you look at it, the metagame has changed for the better because of the nerfs. Games aren't just "faceroll with Ragnarok and instawin on turn 1" anymore, and no amount of buffs would have prevented that from happening: the nerfs obviously needed to happen.

When does the cycle end? The cycle ends when the game is actually balanced, which I define as when you don't automatically bring the same two characters to 95% of PvPs even if they completely conflict with the featured character because they are just that good. In the 3* meta, this almost happened. LazyThor obviously dominates the meta, but I can see a situation where if the PvP is Sentry, then you could bring Doom or someone INSTEAD of LazyThor because of color conflicts. This "XF / GT" meta obviously doesn't agree to that, so more things need to be done to fix this.

The deeper answer to my "power creep" suggestion is that LadyThor is NOT at a state where a simple counter character that isn't completely overpowered could counter her. I was actually thinking about someone that could counter her, and the only one I could come up with was:
4* Hulk - Passive - If ANY member of your team gets stunned, spawn an anger tile and drain all of your opponents red AP.

Now, you could release a character like this without breaking the metagame, but it's obscenely inelegant, and frankly just lazy from a design perspective. Instead of trying to buff everyone to obscene amounts of power level or introduce specific, narrow counter characters for LadyThor, the simpler solution seems to just nerf ladythor instead. But again, given all the hate surrounding the term "nerf", I'd be willing to try doing something like buffing Fury to X-Force tier, and then propose the ladythor nerf again once it's painfully obvious that she's actually just overpowered even in the context of the 4* meta.

It seems to me like we are in agreement more than either of us thought since we both seem to be campaigning for more usablility and an end to there being only 2 charecters used in PvP. I agree with why all the nerfs happned, I'm just saying I was the meta was determined by the introduction of balance as opposed to a constant leveling of impnalance (if that makes sense). In short, I'd prefer a buffing and new charecter approach. I don't think all 4* should be equal, and it seems to me that a lot of the nerf arguments I see aren't about fixing a balance issue, they are often a cry to level everyone off so it's the same and "fair". Obviously as a top tier player you must be getting sick of the stracture and rosters in pvp.

My point is Loki - he's actually used a lot more now due to a thougthful buff, and you'll see him in a trio instead of hood, which 2 months ago if you told me i would have told you that you're daft. Or doom as you mention maybe having a place. I'd rather have more awesome niche playable guys than axing down the ones at the top.

Sure, I can see a little toning down the terrible 2, but my point is that for a long time of MPQ's history it seems to be a 1 tired approach for balance - nerfs. I'd rather see more buffs and creative charecters to address problems like xforce or GT, and it doesn't need to be a power creep. (ei retribution, little off the top, whales, ect ect all good for heavy hit points)

I'm personally nearly ready to quit and go super casual after 1 year becuase of the xforce / GT situation, I'm just bored with it, and tired of struggling against it.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

The deeper answer to my "power creep" suggestion is that LadyThor is NOT at a state where a simple counter character that isn't completely overpowered could counter her. I was actually thinking about someone that could counter her, and the only one I could come up with was:
4* Hulk - Passive - If ANY member of your team gets stunned, spawn an anger tile and drain all of your opponents red AP.

Now, you could release a character like this without breaking the metagame, but it's obscenely inelegant, and frankly just lazy from a design perspective. Instead of trying to buff everyone to obscene amounts of power level or introduce specific, narrow counter characters for LadyThor, the simpler solution seems to just nerf ladythor instead. But again, given all the hate surrounding the term "nerf", I'd be willing to try doing something like buffing Fury to X-Force tier, and then propose the ladythor nerf again once it's painfully obvious that she's actually just overpowered even in the context of the 4* meta.

I've never personally been a fan of silver bulleting strong characters.

That just creates a scenario where, if a player doesn't have the silver bullet, they are right back where they started, essentially making that character just as necessary as the one it was meant to counter.

I agree with you that really you just need to nerf Thor.

Nothing severe. Just something that would make her not the best character in every scenario.

I think people are scared of the word nerf simply because of the axe jobs D3 has done with the likes of Ragnarok, Spiderman and Sentry.

I personally thought the Magneto nerf was very nice. They actually changed him a little, rather than just taking his numbers down.

Unknown

I don't see what's this call for nerf for Thor at least for PvP. Well, she is unusually strong in shield hopping mechanics but I don't consider balance relative to specific P2W-like scenarios. Note that Sentry was strong even without boosts as the exact same combo you use will always wipe out a team, and it just happens that it's easier to use in a shield hopping situation due to the urgency + boosts. If there is a guy who can trivially kill the first guy, and there is (X Force), you'll always be able to win trivially in the resulting 2on2, because using a 4+3 match move to take out one guy is not exactly a high bar to beat and there are guys who can stun one character pretty well. In fact in a complete free form team (mostly for PvE) you would pretty much always be able to do the same thing with Captain America + X Force + anyone who can take out a guy using 19 total AP. Okay Captain America can only stun a guy 2 out of 3 turns but you'd have to have really bad luck to end up losing like that. You're not supposed to start a battle with the assumption that you can kill the first guy trivially. It's currently possible both because X Force is way out there in power, compounded by that featured character in PvP seems to be at an all time low due to the number of 3*/4* you must level up. If we do have a 100% level buff like Bonfire suggested that should eliminate the free kill issue on the featured. I guess that'd also mean you can't get away with using Loki or The Hood but people can adapt to that once you have some assurance that your featured character isn't going to just instantly die to X Force and get put into a stun lock so you might as well use whoever you're already most comfortable.

konannfriends

*************** DONT MESS WITH HOODS BLUE. HE IS PERFECTLY BALANCED. HE HAS A HIGH AP NUKE. A USELESS MOVE AND A PASSIVE WITH LOW HEALTH.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

X Force is not balanced compared to anybody in the game, 3* or 4* or otherwise, so the first question is whether X Force represents the correct power for a 4* or not, because nobody is like him at all. If all 4* are as powerful as him, all games would be effectively decided in two moves, since Surgical Strike + X Force can effectively decide a game. Not end a game, but if your opponent always starts with those two moves for free it'd be awfully hard for you to come back, and conversely if you started with those two moves for free it's awfully hard to screw up.

That's a really sloppy argument, and I respect you enough to think you know it. There are a lot of characters who, if given two of their moves for free, would bust up your team for serious and make it hard for you to win. This is why any 30 ap mega-cascade for the computer signals a super-hard uphill climb or a loss or/and agonizing combination of both. Starting the match with or against a stun/smite is huge, regardless of any of the apologetics' arguments about not being able to control other people capitalizing on charged tiles. Hell, just give Fury a free Demolition and the game is suddenly very very different. And that's not just for 4* characters...no one wants to start against A Little Off the Top/Whales (one dead, two injured...almost guaranteed) or Battleplan/RotP or Thunderstrike/Call of the Storm or Sacrifice/World Rupture or Sniper Rifle by itself...

So the real argument against X-Force regards the price of his abilities, which those who are against them feel is too low. I am not yet convinced of this, because he is squishy enough in a 4* fight that he can be handled fairly easily in the mirror, and their damage is such that one bad move going off against a 4* character is still within the range of recovery.

The argument about changing the face of the current tournament structure is a good one, and right on the money. Hopefully this is something that will be addressed as the game progresses into a more stable 4* model, because the 2+featured tournament style focusing on 3*s simply cannot go on indefinitely. It was boring before it became an endless parade of X-Thor and guest fights; now it's getting a little interminable.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

I feel that D3 is just very inconsistent on their design philosophy. It is impossible for anyone to say what 4* are intended to be relative to 3* because it really doesn't make sense. They're by design to have 62% more HP and that's a very significant increase so your first inclination might be that they're supposed to be overpowered, except when you look at their number/AP, all but X Force likely loses to the top 3*s, sometimes by a very significant margin since 4* tends to have significant restrictions on how their abilities are use (Star-Lord, Nick-Fury, Elektra). It seems like there are literally two conflicting design philosophy between whoever designed their HPs and abilities. It'd make far more sense if 4* are just say 25% better in both category, which would make them overpowered but acceptable, instead of being significantly overpowered in one category (HP) and arguably underpowered in the other (damage for anyone that isn't X Force).

I think the problem started when they released 4Thor and buffed X-Force and all of a sudden 4* were meant to be playable characters, not just status symbols. However, I could see it eventually becoming balanced if new 4* characters just became more and more over powered, much like we're seeing with the release of the latest 3*s.

(edit... added "new 4*" for clarity)

Unknown

Yeah, but, as pointed out--that's not balance in any kind of meaningful sense, because 4* characters should still be better than 3*s. The playing field for characters shouldn't be flat. Otherwise putting those stars over everyone's head doesn't matter.

Trisul

rednailz wrote:

Yes, it's gotten a lot better since true healing, and I'm all for the true healing move. Here's a current example, you're talking about it right now: xforce was buffed, boom - we're needing another nerf becuase the meta was shaken up. Or Cmags was nerfed, and xforce wasn't too useful, thus leaving sentry to run a muck and control the game for a few months just as patchneedo did. I don't care if you agree at all, it's just an opinion of one person. I don't write algoryithims of the game or get out my abicus when trying to determine who's balnces with what when what happens - it's just an observation. The meta seems to be driven more by nerfing and who needs to be nerfed than the machanics of the game, that's it. That's all, and that's also based off of months on these forums. There's always some one on the hit list to be nerfed. Maybe if they fixed IW and put in a "hold person" type approach it would balance things out a little more.

But my only point was, the meta of this game is 100% based on what team is on top, and they are on top until they get nerfed. It's a cycle. So I would expect once GT and xforce get nerfed there will be some one else on the hit list. I'd love to be proven wrong on my knee-jerk opinion.

In my expierance I'd say it'd be a 50/50. I see countless posts on here from people who are pissed that xforce beat them and they don't have a fully covered one. You're on here a lot, I'm sure it's not a stretch for you to acknowledge that.

C'mon dude, every game like this goes through balancing cycles, and there's nothing wrong with nerfing top tier characters if they are deemed overpowered. To deny that is to deny the reality of game development. You didn't need an abacus to figure out the Rags/Spidey/CMags/Sentry needed nerfs.

(for the record, I'm fairly neutral on the "nerf XF/GT" topic. My opinion is more "wait and see what new 4*s are released"... though NP is pretty persuasive in his above posts.)