Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men) and Thor Character Changes

NorthernPolarity

Yeah, id like to hear what the devs thoughts are on patches yellow being the same as old wolvies yellow, as their reasoning for the change can also be applied to patch.

IceIX

-Xios- wrote:

Changes seem fair enough on paper, they don't seem malicious to me.

As someone else mentioned though, it's said in the Dev notes that Wolv's ratio of red AP to strike tiles was increased, but that's not the case anywhere in the notes... typo?

Not at work now so I don't have access to builds and I don't remember how the end result panned out from discussion. It's either 5 AP as it is and the little line about efficiency is outdated, or it's per 3 AP and it's a typo. I'll check tomorrow.

Spoit

IceIX wrote:

-Xios- wrote:

Changes seem fair enough on paper, they don't seem malicious to me.

As someone else mentioned though, it's said in the Dev notes that Wolv's ratio of red AP to strike tiles was increased, but that's not the case anywhere in the notes... typo?

Not at work now so I don't have access to builds and I don't remember how the end result panned out from discussion. It's either 5 AP as it is and the little line about efficiency is outdated, or it's per 3 AP and it's a typo. I'll check tomorrow.

If it's per 3 AP, ignore my gripe about the reduced strike values on top of AP cost increase

Unknown

Everything about this seems reasonable to me, they strike me as perfectly solid 2-star level characters now. Thank you to the developers for doing what looks like a nice job on the changes as well as sharing the information and rationale behind it all. This level of communication and thought makes me want to stay engaged as a player regardless of how much I like or dislike any single particular change. Looking forward to the mystery X-character hinted at in this thread, so many great options!

Unknown

To be honest, I'm struggling to see where the core problems with either character are addressed.

Re Wolv:

GREEN:

2* Wolv's greatest benefit as the current "strike tile king" remains in the rebuild. Although is strike tile damage is reduced somewhat, you can still boost your way to two strike tiles on turn one. the 3* upgrades, Patch and Punisher, both have significant drawbacks to their strike tile deployment, for even more green AP (Punisher - 8 ; Patch - 9). Both Patch and Punisher require at least one green match in addition to a double green boost to cast at all. Thus, 2* Wolv still has alpha strike capabilities, which makes him still very highly desirable in this regard compared to his counterparts in addition to complete lack of diminishing returns on strike tile deployment.

RED:

Fuzzy quick math on my end says that Red at 3 will generate roughly about the same damage that this skill does at 85 now (2200ish). Red at 5 is does 30% more damage for the same 4 matches that the old skill took...

YELLOW:

The 50% limit to trigger the health regen is useful, but 562 healing on a single yellow match is fairly godly. That's just barely under half of OBW's heal at 85, and matching a single set of 3 yellows is vastly easier than matching three sets of blues to fire her heal off.

Thor:

RED:

Expected, but the downgrades are only minimal at best. 2 less yellow tiles generated and only 100 points less damage at 85.

YELLOW:

Very significant damage reduction, which was unexpected. However, creates even more green strike tiles than before (uh oh....) which leads to...

GREEN:

Umm... one phrase here please: " 2* GSBW Sniper Rifle".

Seriously... The trade off here from old Thor is 2500 from Thunder Strike to 4000 AE (2000 + 1000 +1000) with the new Call of Storm? And for only 5 green matches, after generating as much as 9 green tiles from the yellow cast? Heaven forbid, you team him with a green generator, such as Hulk. And at 14 AP, a green generator (or the Oasis ability on the desert stage) could generate enough green to two back-to-back casts of this with the 30 AP inventory limit.

Could someone tell me how either of these characters were not BUFFED with these changes? I'm more scared of their new forms than I am of their current ones...

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So Colossus is coming? Is that the takeaway here? It's so hard to see the forest with all of these trees around.

Possible, yes. Not planned for the immediate future. Next upcoming X-Men character is someone else.

Cyclopse nightcrawler Emma.frost or deadpool are my.guesses. it could.be beast as well I guess. Those are my guess. Now..nod your head if one of those was right?

Spoit

soenottelling wrote:

IceIX wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So Colossus is coming? Is that the takeaway here? It's so hard to see the forest with all of these trees around.

Possible, yes. Not planned for the immediate future. Next upcoming X-Men character is someone else.

Cyclopse nightcrawler Emma.frost or deadpool are my.guesses. it could.be beast as well I guess. Those are my guess. Now..nod your head if one of those was right?

Nah, it's clearly another wolvie Or maybe another mags, to be the new hotness after c.mags is nerfed

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Not at work now so I don't have access to builds and I don't remember how the end result panned out from discussion. It's either 5 AP as it is and the little line about efficiency is outdated, or it's per 3 AP and it's a typo. I'll check tomorrow.

Interesting. If that's the case that helps soften that blow, since as it stands right now it's half the ratio of Strike tile generation due to being able to only cast it half the number of times; assuming 5 green covers of course.

Nonce Equitaur 2

As one of the people more vocal about the Ragnarok adjustment .... this looks fine, and I'm glad to hear that Rags will be getting a third ability. The adjustments to Wolverine and Thor look fine to me.

Unknown

Wolverine's healing might as well not even matter in high level PVE matches. If you're under 50% HP you're going to get one shot by pretty much any L240 character's skill. Hell, a L120 Jugg could probably kill you even if Wolverine is boosted.

Spoit

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

As one of the people more vocal about the Ragnarok adjustment .... this looks fine, and I'm glad to hear that Rags will be getting a third ability. The adjustments to Wolverine and Thor look fine to me.

Yeah, 6->8 is not nearly as big a change as 2->6. And the other power changes are arguably better

Spencer75

IceIX wrote:

Ben Grimm wrote:

1. I think I may need to respec my Thor (he's currently 3/5/3) though I'm not sure yet. Is this coming?
2. Is 5/5/3 now the optimal Wolverine build?

1. It's coming. I do not however, have a timeline. We want to make sure the system for that is extensible and robust and not just a new UI using Gorn Engineering to get it working.
2. That's what I'd run personally. But I'm a "kill them before they kill you" type player.

Is that a firefly reference? If so nice!

Eddiemon

Lyrian wrote:

To be honest, I'm struggling to see where the core problems with either character are addressed.

Re Wolv:

GREEN:

2* Wolv's greatest benefit as the current "strike tile king" remains in the rebuild. Although is strike tile damage is reduced somewhat, you can still boost your way to two strike tiles on turn one. the 3* upgrades, Patch and Punisher, both have significant drawbacks to their strike tile deployment, for even more green AP (Punisher - 8 ; Patch - 9). Both Patch and Punisher require at least one green match in addition to a double green boost to cast at all. Thus, 2* Wolv still has alpha strike capabilities, which makes him still very highly desirable in this regard compared to his counterparts in addition to complete lack of diminishing returns on strike tile deployment.

RED:

Fuzzy quick math on my end says that Red at 3 will generate roughly about the same damage that this skill does at 85 now (2200ish). Red at 5 is does 30% more damage for the same 4 matches that the old skill took...

YELLOW:

The 50% limit to trigger the health regen is useful, but 562 healing on a single yellow match is fairly godly. That's just barely under half of OBW's heal at 85, and matching a single set of 3 yellows is vastly easier than matching three sets of blues to fire her heal off.

Thor:

RED:

Expected, but the downgrades are only minimal at best. 2 less yellow tiles generated and only 100 points less damage at 85.

YELLOW:

Very significant damage reduction, which was unexpected. However, creates even more green strike tiles than before (uh oh....) which leads to...

GREEN:

Umm... one phrase here please: " 2* GSBW Sniper Rifle".

Seriously... The trade off here from old Thor is 2500 from Thunder Strike to 4000 AE (2000 + 1000 +1000) with the new Call of Storm? And for only 5 green matches, after generating as much as 9 green tiles from the yellow cast? Heaven forbid, you team him with a green generator, such as Hulk. And at 14 AP, a green generator (or the Oasis ability on the desert stage) could generate enough green to two back-to-back casts of this with the 30 AP inventory limit.

Could someone tell me how either of these characters were not BUFFED with these changes? I'm more scared of their new forms than I am of their current ones...

Wolverine.
For 3 more green punisher can deploy 3 tiles at twice the damage per tile, for 3x total output.punisher also isn't limited to red. If it is 3 red AP instead of 5 then the punisher is only twice as strong for 3 more green.
Red balanced. Before you always wanted another red user on your team because this was weak.
Yellow. Yes it is half of OBW, but it also only heals one character, so actually a sixth. And only when he is half dead. And you can't save it up.

I don't know how you consider that a buff. It costs more green to deploy red tiles and when all red are converted the damage total is significantly reduced from what it was.

Thor
Less yellow tiles bashed out make it harder to use the yellow ability. Less board control, less cascades. Used less often.
Yellow generates sick amount of green, but it is no longer the finisher it once was.
Green has been buffed, but it was hilariously weak before. While the main target has gone from 1k to 2k, if you look at the damage your main target has taken from a yellow and green ability combined, it remains the same. So the big change is the extra 500 damage to the party.

His GSBW as you put it is still half of Widow's. His penchant for cheap yellow cascades leading to a big yellow finisher has also gone away. His single target damage has been crushed. He has been slowed right down.

Unknown

pmknpie wrote:

Wolverine's healing might as well not even matter in high level PVE matches. If you're under 50% HP you're going to get one shot by pretty much any L240 character's skill. Hell, a L120 Jugg could probably kill you even if Wolverine is boosted.

His healing never did do a lot for him against high-end skills. Yeah, he could barely tank a Thunder Strike from full HP and slowly recover, but you'd better not want him out front if you were going to try that. It was more about being able to ignore match damage indefinitely, even with Daken squatting a tile or three, and he's lost that but gained more of an ability to lurch back from the brink.

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Yeah, id like to hear what the devs thoughts are on patches yellow being the same as old wolvies yellow, as their reasoning for the change can also be applied to patch.

Patch is much worse if they're arguing that passively healing that much every turn is inherently a problem, because his yellow is mechanically similar but heals more because it's similar % against his *** total. But that could just mean they consider it acceptable on ***, not **. Also, unlike old **Wolv, patch has a green and red you really want at 5 if you're using them, so putting 5 in his yellow costs dearly offensively. His yellow is still strong at 3 but won't go off half the time. And then there's the fact he kills his own team in four turns unless you handcuff Loki to him, which I would've thought is "balanced" enough for anyone.

Unknown

These changes seem reasonable. It's nice to know Rag will have a third ability and a respec system will be out in the future.

Unknown

While nerfing Thor and Wolverine are great for PVP this will **** every relatively new player in the PVE events. Red going from 6 to 16? Insane. I can't believe I blew 20 bucks on HP to get cover slots to find out 3 weeks later the only covers that show up frequently are getting beaten down.

Dayv

IceIX wrote:

Ghast wrote:

So Colossus is coming? Is that the takeaway here? It's so hard to see the forest with all of these trees around.

Possible, yes. Not planned for the immediate future. Next upcoming X-Men character is someone else.

4* villain, Dark Phoenix?

Unknown

from

Lyrian wrote:

To be honest, I'm struggling to see where the core problems with either character are addressed.

Re Wolv:

GREEN:

2* Wolv's greatest benefit as the current "strike tile king" remains in the rebuild. Although is strike tile damage is reduced somewhat, you can still boost your way to two strike tiles on turn one. the 3* upgrades, Patch and Punisher, both have significant drawbacks to their strike tile deployment, for even more green AP (Punisher - 8 ; Patch - 9). Both Patch and Punisher require at least one green match in addition to a double green boost to cast at all. Thus, 2* Wolv still has alpha strike capabilities, which makes him still very highly desirable in this regard compared to his counterparts in addition to complete lack of diminishing returns on strike tile deployment.

RED:

Fuzzy quick math on my end says that Red at 3 will generate roughly about the same damage that this skill does at 85 now (2200ish). Red at 5 is does 30% more damage for the same 4 matches that the old skill took...

YELLOW:

The 50% limit to trigger the health regen is useful, but 562 healing on a single yellow match is fairly godly. That's just barely under half of OBW's heal at 85, and matching a single set of 3 yellows is vastly easier than matching three sets of blues to fire her heal off.

Thor:

RED:

Expected, but the downgrades are only minimal at best. 2 less yellow tiles generated and only 100 points less damage at 85.

YELLOW:

Very significant damage reduction, which was unexpected. However, creates even more green strike tiles than before (uh oh....) which leads to...

GREEN:

Umm... one phrase here please: " 2* GSBW Sniper Rifle".

Seriously... The trade off here from old Thor is 2500 from Thunder Strike to 4000 AE (2000 + 1000 +1000) with the new Call of Storm? And for only 5 green matches, after generating as much as 9 green tiles from the yellow cast? Heaven forbid, you team him with a green generator, such as Hulk. And at 14 AP, a green geerator (or the Oasis ability on the desert stage) could generate enough green to two back-to-back casts of this with the 30 AP inventory limit.

Could someone tell me how either of these characters were not BUFFED with these changes? I'm more scared of their new forms than I am of their current ones...

Sure.

Wolvie green: with 6 gr/red to start before he was dropping 4 89 dmg tiles and doing a few hundred on the first attack and about double on the second use. Subsequent uses of his green after the initial two being where the damage really starts to get insane. Compare that with 500 damage and 2 59 dmv tiles. For
hose first two uses the old green's advantage is a mild amount of extra damage total and 356 strike tile dmg vs. 118. That's 3x as much strike tile damage..on turn 1 alone. That revs up more and more since its only 3 ap vs 6 to get more on the board. Very large nerf, but it was def op before and made other green abilities obsolete.

Wolvie red: is mildly buffed

Wolvie yellow: nerfed hard. Yes, it heals 500 with a yellow match but the 50% hp means he needs to have below 2000 hp to function and so its much easier to ko him as now you only really need to chip him down and unleash one strong ap.move on him. Probably more fair for PvP, but its a depressing nerf for pve where he was a beast because u never had go worry about his hp. Plus, the most that hp will do is getting you up to around 2.2k hp where you can still get koed by a strong move.

Thor red: nerfed...but it could have been worse. That said, it was worse than it needed to be. 1k damage at max lvl with 8 ap would have been fine.

Thor yellow: worse, but also different. 4 extra green on the board isn't worth the damage lost...but it makes him interesting. Definently a nerf, though with the right team the nerf is mitigated. You need to remember the yellow cost less, did more damage, and still made 5 green.

Thor green: buffed very much so. Was pitiful before. Make him function much more like originally intended probably imo. Before he was "hold 12-24 red, build enough for 2 yellow off the red uses, use the green elsewhere on the only guy not dead". Now its "build 16-24 red, use 1-2 yellow, use green to help ko one or two guys who you didn't kill yet by spreading the red and yellow move damage around."

Red was mildly buffed, green thor was highly boosted, everything else was nerfed.

Unknown

Did nobody else pick up on the mention of Colossus? Didn't read the whole thread. Bring on the nerfs.

Unknown

I have some key issues that I feel need to be addressed. I agree that Wolverine and Thor are unbalanced. I think the developers over did it much like they did with the Ragnarok nerf. I'm not crazy about Thor's Red ability being an 8AP skill. Mjolnir's Hammer is arguably worse than Photon Blast now, which is a pretty bad ability. His Yellow ability does dramatically less damage, it's just such a huge change. I like that it generates tons of green AP, but at such a high AP cost/per damage it's basically useless. My first instinct was to pair him with GSBW, but at that cost it's asinine. You nerfed Thor's damage, his AP cost, and his potential to save up red ap to chain his abilities. I cannot envision Thor being used at all in tournaments or pve. He went from top dog to non-threatening. Clearly we're moving away from spammable abilities, but you need to make subtle adjustments on the fly and see how things work. Not make dramatic adjustments like this that destroy the feel of the characters. Furthermore, I find it incredibly unfair that I optimized my characters and now suddenly my Thor isn't ideal, because his Green Ability went from worst to best. I'm sure Ragnaroks third ability will be better than his other two and I'll have no way to fix him. Respec > Huge nerfing of characters (Ragnarok, Thor, Wolverine), simply because it's unfair to not let my fix my cover selections.

The Big Issue: In PVE events, and this new Daredevil Event in particular, I have had to use Thor and Wolverine coupled with 3 different AP boosts(500 Iso per battle) just to have a fighting chance to beat these ridiculously high leveled enemies you're pitting us against. Without these characters I have zero chance to win against such high leveled enemies. Are you going to address this? Will future events be easier to compensate for the lack of Thorverine? Are these 230 enemies going to be standard for PVE events moving forward? I much prefer the way the Hulk event worked, in the sense that there was one easy area and one hard area. Now I basically have to choose between doing the event or the tournaments, because I don't have enough healthpacks or iso for boosts to do both. I basically get two tries per PVE battle before I have to quit playing, which is not fun.