Bring a little balance to Iron Fist with one line of code.

GuntherBlobel

Here's my proposal to fix Iron Fist with very little work on the Dev side.

TL;DR: Change Exquisite Technique so that always creates an attack tile (as it does now), but also drains stored AP each time it is activated. To some degree, this balances IF's ability and gives the player a strategic reason to match IF's attack tile.

I think Daken is a really good model for what a balanced IF could be like: Daken's passives are powerful, but they also have match-based counters (matching blue and red tiles to depletion). Daken's weaknesses are difficult to exploit, but this balance is critical, particularly as he scales in level. If I had to face a lvl 395 Daken, you'd better believe I'd make blue and red matches my first priority. Iron Fist has no match-based counters to Exquisite Technique and that is a problem for a match-3 game.

Thematically, IF is a lot like Daken, except instead of running on blue (Daken's addiction), IF runs on black (Chi). If you match IF's attack tile, then actually, your Kung Fu is better and IF begins to doubt himself, losing some of the Chi he's been storing up while kicking you in the head each turn. For a that guy adds 9 tiles to the board for just 5 AP, this is hardly a nerf, but it does give the opposing player a strategic reason to match IF's attack tile.

Exquisite Technique - Passive
(PASSIVE) The Immortal Iron Fist has the best Kung-fu. So bring it. At the beginning of every turn, if there are no friendly Attack tiles, create a strength 60 Green Attack tile. Each time an attack tile is created, Iron Fist expends 3 AP, if available.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Creates a strength 71 Green Attack tile.
Level 3: Creates a strength 82 Green Attack tile.
Level 4: Creates a strength 104 Green Attack tile.
Level 5: Creates a strength 153 Green Attack tile.
Max Level
Level 3 - Strength 260 Green Attack tile.
Level 4 - Strength 330 Green Attack tile.
Level 5 - Strength 486 Green Attack tile.

Unknown

I like it. Purple makes black, black supercharges green and purple. Black passive does it's thing unless the enemy team counters it which reduces his level of supercharge.

In another thread I had suggested making his passive a 1 turn countdown timer that does damage so that he can be stunned etc to stop the bleed.

We could combine the two and have him create a CD timer that does damage every turn (and creates a new one if the first is destroyed) but drains 1 black ap each time it does damage, like a passive non scaling Torch

GuntherBlobel

Cryptobrancus wrote:

I like it. Purple makes black, black supercharges green and purple. Black passive does it's thing unless the enemy team counters it which reduces his level of supercharge.

In another thread I had suggested making his passive a 1 turn countdown timer that does damage so that he can be stunned etc to stop the bleed.

We could combine the two and have him create a CD timer that does damage every turn (and creates a new one if the first is destroyed) but drains 1 black ap each time it does damage, like a passive non scaling Torch

I really liked your idea and some of the others in that thread! This one I feel, requires very little coding and testing, while addressing two problems 1) being OP and 2) being absolutely no fun to play against.

Whatever they do, I would very much like the Devs to not "nerf" this guy into oblivion or take 6 months to write code for complicated solutions or a major rework (a la cMags). Please Devs, get it over with and do it well.

Unknown

There is only one thing wrong with fist. Purple to cheap. No reason to break him instead of fixing the one thing wrong with him.

Fist should be good. Fixing purple makes him not op. Your idea makes him almost pedestrian.

The auto attack tile is a new mechanic. I wish people would stop complaining about it. Learn to adapt. More new mechanics will continue to be introduced to keep characters from getting stale. We have 2 dakens, we don't need a 3rd.

GuntherBlobel

The_Valeyard wrote:

Your idea makes him almost pedestrian... Learn to adapt... We have 2 dakens, we don't need a 3rd.

I'm on day 452 or something like that. I've seen almost every big shake up in the game and I'm still playing and enjoying it. I'm just offering a suggestion to make playing the matching game more fun.

Maybe the 3 AP drain is overkill. 1 or 2 AP shouldn't break IF and it would still add some much needed strategy to IF's attack tile mechanic. Adding balance to a character doesn't make him another Daken. I hope you didn't take the analogy too literally.

Unknown

@ Valeyard
Some of us find it frustratingly annoying to fight that little tile. There is little hope of D3 actually enacting one of our suggestions verbatim so we are just venting frustrations by talking about ways it could be different. I am glad you like this new feature. Take hope from the fact that you will probably get to keep it the way you like because the devs are slow to nerf and like you said should prioritize his purple should they change him at all. If you tire of the discussion of the pros and cons of IF then stop reading them. If you have a better suggestion of what to do with him or a passioned defense of why you think he should stay the way he is please feel free to contribute.

As to the learn to adapt, got lots of good ideas on that one myself but need about 10 covers and 4 wheelbarrows of iso before I can even test some of those plans, which will take a while and I have little control over the when that will come to fruition. In the short term I can talk about "what if we change such and such" all day long and enjoy the thought exercise.

And if I find that my pace is not going to be enough to keep up with the rate the game wants me to adapt and my past teams that worked well all become obsolete before I can get characters up to speed with the new meta? Well if that happens then I guess my choice becomes remain content being obsolete, or find a new game. I would rather use my opinion to make sure the pace of adaption is one I can keep up with. Yes there will always be those at the top craving more, bigger, faster but I personally don't want to fall off the back of the wagon just to keep those people entertained. I guess that makes me selfish

Unknown

You don't adapt to a move that does about 50% of the best attack tile creation ability in the game that costs absolutely nothing and is replaced the moment you destroy it. It's going to hurt you and it's going to hurt a lot. The average match 3 damage is about 200, so you're taking more than 3 of the usual damage per round with Iron Fist around (200 match + 500 attack). The game currently does not support this kind of unavoidable attrition. It's the same reason why Daken was nerfed and Phermone Rage, even at 2X66 or whatever they are, took quite a while before it ramped up to the 500 damage match range, and in theory it can be stopped or at least slowed down, and unlike Iron FIst, Daken is generally not a threat to winning the game by himself. The argument for adjusting to this move is quite frankly, hilarious. We're supposed to believe that everyone wins their game without ever taking a significant move so this isn't a problem, except you're taking triple the attrition damage if the opponent never uses a special move and yet taking 3 times the damage compared to before clearly doesn't change how you play the game at all! Never mind that Iron Fist's purple is far faster than almost anything a team without Iron Fist can do without AP+3 all boosts so that you probably will be taking his purple which can lead to add kinds of disastrous results.

For IF's purple, I came up with this hardly sensical change that will definitely make it work:

"Iron Fist creates 9 purple tiles or deal X damage if above 12 black AP, if all the black active users on the team are woman. Otherwise, he uses a random black move from a woman character instead."

That'd mean you can get Shadow Step, Hailstorm, Psi-Katana, Hypersonic Punch, Masterstroke, Bad Reputation, Payback Mission, or Control-Shift.