Wolverine (Astonishing X-Men) and Thor Character Changes

Elric_VIII

I have to say, while I agree that changes needed to be made, I am not happy with the handling of Thor's Thunderstrike and **Wolverine's Healing Factor. I can get over the Thunderstike change because, while drastic, the skill is almost completely different in function. However, the change if Healing Factor makes it nearly useless since at 50% health (~1800, I think) you are within burst range of 90% of the PvE countdowns and a fair amount of PvP skills as well.

What I would really like to see is **Wolvie's Healing Factor changed to something like:

Healing Factor

• Whenever you make a yellow match Wolverine heals 2% of his missing health.

Cost: Passive

Upgrades:

• Level 2: 4% of missing health.
• Level 3: 6% of missing health.
• Level 4: 8% of missing health.
• Level 5: 10% of missing health.

Basically, this keeps the idea of the new version of this skill by being powerful while you are low, but still retains some of the staying power that the old skill granted.

I'm really okay with all of the other changes. Feral Claws was just insane and Mjolnir's Might was a hilariously OP skill.

Unknown

timber wrote:

Oh and my prediction.....Original Black Widow is the next to get knocked down. She's insanely good.

If they touch her, I am out of here in a heartbeat. Now that 2* Wolverine turned into a cub with 40 strength trike tiles and Patch gives +450 damage to opposing matches (in level 3 to green - he gives +900 in level 5) she is extremely fragile. She died twice in matches with Maggia after the patch, which hadn't happen for a long, long time. Better make the game Early Access if they are going to change everyone.

Edit: If a respec system is still on the table, I think the decent thing to do would be to give an ETA, even if it is vague, like ~6 months. Saying that they are planning to give this option, and not bringing it with the sell option for Thor and Wolverine, makes me very suspicious. Why the delay? Does it have to do with GUI issues? The GUI changed a lot even with this patch, so I don't buy it. Does it have to do with the level drop of the character? This should be easy to code since the characters move from a fixed state to another as you add (or remove) covers. I feel this option is slipping further and further away.

Unknown

Narkon wrote:

timber wrote:

Oh and my prediction.....Original Black Widow is the next to get knocked down. She's insanely good.

If they touch her, I am out of here in a heartbeat. Now that 2* Wolverine turned into a cub with 40 strength trike tiles and Patch gives +400 damage to opposing matches (in level 3 to green - he gives +800 in level 5) she extremely fragile. She died twice in matches with Maggia after the patch, which hadn't happen for a long, long time. Better make the game Early Access if they are going to change everyone.

Yeah, if she gets nerfed I am out too. I want to see some boosts for a change. I Actually think Spider-man is underpowered now. I would like to see the 4*'s get fixed first though.

azmadu

Right in the middle of the Thick as Thieves Tournament I get wasted on one of the missions I've previously been able to complete with some strategic play and then all of a sudden all three of my characters down (Thor, Black Widow Or, Wolverine Ast). What the deuce??????

Hey I understand the necessity to make improvements to the game based on the feedback from the community but your assertion that there was no good time to do this is simply a load of **** and shows that you've not done a modicum of research (or at the very least it seems this way) into the implications of what's been done.

I've worked in games development much like others' have commented and have been a hardcore gamer for decades and so I've had the good fortune to play untold games over the years and one of the best implementations of 'DOWN TIME' was done by CCP with EVE-Online. Every morning at 11:00 GMT the servers go down for maintenance for 1 hour so that patches can be applied and the servers get cleaned up. Everyone knew this was the time (world wide) and prepared accordingly by docking their expensive ships out from harms way so no nasty surprises were had suddenly if we're out doing missions and suddenly the NPC suddenly appear to get a double shield or armour boost, when in fact all that happened was your lasers/missiles/projectiles got nerfed right in the middle of the fire fight.

That's exactly what's happened here and sure I saw the notice "Updating game" but did it tell me what got updated, or to check the forum for the latest news? Was I given any warning that the characters in my team were drastically altered and I should consult their stats to check the changes??? Oh NOOOO, that would be too easy right????

So Thor now requires 8 red to attack, and produces 3 yellow, Thunderstrike now produces 7 green at lvl 4 or 9 at lvl5, so with my Thor at 5/4/4 will you give me the ability to change his load out just as I would be able to do in EVE-Online?? What about the Maggia in these bouts? Have you also changed how they beat us up?

Seriously I appreciate the challenges that an online game gives you, but you have to be very cautious because this game is NOT free, and people have payed vast sums (me included) to level up my character and now to see my builds all but up ended is not good business in my opinion.

Make necessary changes to balance characters for sure, but in so doing you MUST give us the ability to re-distribute covers for affected characters as well as this is only fair, but more importantly it makes sense.

Ok rant over, but please do more to inform us of changes (forum is only good for those that check regularly) and try to implement a scheduled down time so that you can apply significant game patches and upgrades.

Dayv

IceIX wrote:

gobstopper wrote:

Can you explain to us simple folk why introducing game-altering changes mid-event is worse than before/after a PvE? "Because it changes the meta" - Well, you are doing that no matter when you patch. Your explanation is mindboggling.

Hmm? I didn't say it was worse. I just said that there's no good time for us to really do so. We don't run events that are a month long like some games. Ours might run a week. After making changes to other characters (Ragnarok for example) it took a while for players to adapt their strategies. As in, more than a full Tourney cycle long. For that entire time that people were adapting, meta was shaken up and nothing was very solid for anyone.

There have definitely been days with only a single, fairly standard and short-lived PvP event. PvE events are a huge commitment of time and changing major portions of the game in the middle of them (such as boost prices during a broken event most players can only compete in with boosts) utterly destroys the ability of some players to continue competing.

Dayv

The biggest problem that I have with 2* Wolverine's new yellow skill is that it makes him the only regenerating character who can only heal when he's significantly wounded. Daken, Patch, and X-Force Wolverine can all heal themselves up to full. Only ever healing part of the way just doesn't match Wolverine's character at all. I'm not saying he should be undefeatable, but his old regeneration made up for his lower HP when compared to more traditional 2* tanks like Thor or Ares.

I don't *hate* the new yellow, but I'm not a fan. I think it would be better if it always healed a little on a yellow match, with full effects if he's below 50%. Similar to the varying effects for Ares and Classic Storm's red and yellow powers.

Unknown

I'm going to be the first I've seen to complain. I actually am not mad about Wolverine. I mean, he will no longer be a major player on my team, but he's not worthless.

Thor however has been rendered pretty much ineffective. Honestly, Classic Storm is a more viable option for playable character. It's going to take Thor way to long to build up his strongest attack now. The Tile count is way too low. But, I'll find a new line up to use. It's not the first time a moble game has changed on me to make things a pain. Heh heh...not even for this game. :-/

Unknown

Honestly, no one supports this ridiculous patch. I've spend real money on this game and all of it has been stolen by the devs in this update. If you want to play the character rebalance game, feel free, just learn to REIMBURSE EVERY SINGLE ISO-8 to the people who spent time and money leveling their team. How can it be remotely fair to ruin a team composition and say tough luck, all those hours and dollars are now wasted. Don't like it? Too bad, we don't care about our customers.

I'll say this very clearly, I don't care if they completely crippled Thor (who now, at level 85 does less damage than Ironman at Level 50), Wolverine and any other character they feel like "rebalancing". What is equivalent to theft is not allowing players to spend their hard earned ISO-8 on another team to enjoy the game. Return the full 100,000 Iso-8 it costs to level cap Thor or Wolverine and see how many players still want to use your "Balanced" Thor and Wolverine. Devs, you already made money from me, why not allow me to enjoy the game and play different Heroes?

As I don't believe the Devs will own up to their mistakes, I've already petitioned the Steam store for a full refund and I recommend that everyone does the same (appstore, googleplay, etc...). Either they return ALL of our ISO-8 and hero coins so we may spend them on something that actually works now or we leave WITH OUR MONEY!

Best regards,
NazgulPrime

TheHood

Green skill with strike tile strength 40 at max?
Oh come on, rise it to 60, Daken now is better than him! (or give a third skill to Daken)
And his yellow skill.....
Time to build a Wolverine Patch.

Unknown

Hello guys and devs. Since the beggining of January, i managed to grab my final astonighing wolverine covers, and since then i've been using him a lot.
I run a 5/3/5 lvl55 Wolverine with a 3/5/5 lvl50 Original Black Widow as a main team, with an additional character like Classic Storm/Modern Hawkeye/Ares, now working towards a Punisher and a Thor (both are 3/3/3).

While nerfs to the characters you use is natural to make you feel bad, i didnt want to say anything at all. I understand they where to good.

I'm writing this post, because at least for me, Wolverine is not usable anymore. I am not exagerating.
At level 55, his health is 2340. Thor's health at 45 is 2940. I didnt realized how squishy Wolverine actually is until the nerf on healing. My wolverine dies every two missions or so.
To activate his healing, he needs to be below 50%. That didnt sound so bad at least to me, but it's horrible. He is tanking everything(him being the highest level), and when the ai uses a power, he is way below 50%. He is usually around 30% health points, then i match a yellow (5 covers in yellow). He is taken back to about 50%-55% health. Then he will die the next time the opponent uses a power.

The passive healing was hiding how squishy Wolverine was, because it almost negated every tile matching damage.Now it stacks up, and he won't be close to full hp when the ai uses a power. If he somehow survives the casted power, you can heal him from low hp back to 50% or so, but he will die next time guaranteed.

At this point i feel that i cannot use him. I would prefer having an level 55 1 star Iron Man instead of him. IM 35 is more tanky, and the 4 protect tiles from his yellow are really good.

azmadu

So I thought my rant was over but I just discovered a reason to complain.

When did the 'Stockpile +3 to all AP' change from costing 200 ISO-8 to costing 100 HP? I was wondering why my measly sum of HP was depleting and I'd lost 500 HP, yes I said lost but maybe I should have said stolen!!! In fact I've been robbed because I never saw any information that told me this was happening. Last night I had 1920 HP, and now I notice I've only got 1420 so now I'm vexed!

I can fully understand the need to balance gameplay but this change will mean that those of us with shallow pockets will not be in a position to even compete in several missions simply because it has now become expensive to do so.

I could join a few Lightening rounds and earn 70/140 iso that would allow me to have a fighting chance against some of the harder battles but now that change coupled with Thor being hammered himself, literally, I find hard to understand why you need to charge for this Booster.

The 200 HP for the 150% Boosters for Maggia and HAMMER I can appreciate, and the 400 Iso-8 for the Damage to Mutants was expensive enough to make you think hard when you use it, but why oh why did someone think that 100 HP was a great balancer for the '+3 to all AP' ?????

It has become useless simply because I can't afford to use it, but if that's your design decision then why not just say we don't want mid-low level players to play anymore!! This game is for our elite players with lvl 85 characters only and all you cheap players can suck it or quit!!!

I'm terribly sorry that I haven't spent enough money, but I can only afford to get my Thor up to lvl 52 at the moment and now I can't use him the way I have been accustomed to and on top of that I have to pay for something that was accessible to everyone for in game rewards. Who did the QA on this change? How did you all sit through many game play sessions and agree that yeah this is the change that would keep players playing and make them smile?

Am I the only one that thinks this is ridiculous?

Will I be using stockpile any longer as it is, of course not. So there you have it you've achieved balance.

Take care of what you're doing because you only have to read ancient books to know what happens when people do things for a few sheckles, because when the tide comes it'll be difficult to reverse its course!!!!

bahamut685

Simple summary on the Thor changes: compare new Thor to Ares, Ares does similar damage (or much more) 20 levels lower.

azmadu

bahamut685 wrote:

Simple summary on the Thor changes: compare new Thor to Ares, Ares does similar damage (or much more) 20 levels lower.

I wish I'd done my Ares to 5/3/5 instead of the 4/4/5 that I have done!

The changes to Thor are not good, but I understand they needed to re-balance him, but Ares is now his superior but that shouldn't be the case as both of them are 'gods'.

1, 2, 3 or 4, 5, 6 is how Thor's skills should stack. Green > Yellow > Red, but what we have is Red > Yellow < Green. Well at least my Thor now does 680 > 450 < 1150, but this doesn't seem right to me at all and especially since Ares has come on the scene.

Ah what's the point.......!

Unknown

bahamut685 wrote:

Simple summary on the Thor changes: compare new Thor to Ares, Ares does similar damage (or much more) 20 levels lower.

Ares doesn't spit out 9 green tiles while he's at it. Not even Hulk or GSBW can do that. They've split old Thor into control/feeder in new Thor and damage train in Ares. Doesn't seem unreasonable, and directly comparing their damage as if Ares does anything else is misleading.

DD-The-Mighty

Veracity wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

Simple summary on the Thor changes: compare new Thor to Ares, Ares does similar damage (or much more) 20 levels lower.

Ares doesn't spit out 9 green tiles while he's at it. Not even Hulk or GSBW can do that. They've split old Thor into control/feeder in new Thor and damage train in Ares. Doesn't seem unreasonable, and directly comparing their damage as if Ares does anything else is misleading.

But the truth is Thor is now just a green generating meat shield. If you don't have a better harder hitting 3* to feed, Thor is a waste of io, you probably better off using Ares for a pure 2* damage character.

Heh.
Hes like a male Blackwidow that only gives out a little bit of yellow and a lot of green. Useful as fodder for your better characters but a pale shadow of his former self. I hope modern storm and IM35 get funbalanced like he did.

bahamut685

DD-The-Mighty wrote:

But the truth is Thor is now just a green generating meat shield. If you don't have a better harder hitting 3* to feed, Thor is a waste of io, you probably better off using Ares for a pure 2* damage character.

Heh.
Hes like a male Blackwidow that only gives out a little bit of yellow and a lot of green. Useful as fodder for your better characters but a pale shadow of his former self. I hope modern storm and IM35 get funbalanced like he did.

I see a "funbalance" for Modern Storm making her red cost 14 AP, but dealing a base damage and 20% more per tile, but ending turn (like Hood's yellow), decrease the number of Attack tiles created by her black, and decrease the number of tiles destroyed by her green.
Meanwhile, IM35's "funbalance" would lower the power of his red, up the damage on his yellow and drop to 2 Protect tiles, and lower the damage on his Blue, but drop the AP cost.

Unknown

I think that the last patch made obvious even to the non believers that the game is in Early Access stage and by no means a finished product. Heroes that players paid to level are revamped to versions that serve a different function, heroes are missing powers (I didn't know that but I saw a comment that Ragnarok is missing 1 power), price changes you are never informed about and other. After the fiasko of X-Rebirth on steam, we see another game being released in a similar state, but not having the Early Access label. It makes you wonder if the devs are the only to blame, or that maybe Steam should share the responsibility for this mess. Lately, Steam has received some negative popularity and this game doesn't help them change that. The honest thing to do would be to have a huge label when the app opens saying that all heroes (not just Wolverine and Thor since more will change before this ends) are subject to changes when the devs decide to fun-balance them.

I shouldn't complain since I only threw $5 in the game and I played many hours lately, but still, when you see a developer being cryptic and not clear from the start when you enter a game, it leaves a sour taste. I just feel sorry for people who paid too much. Maybe this will become a lesson to be more careful in the future with f2p games.

Actually, I like the term funbalance. I decided to use it in the future to avoid using strong language. Instead of saying
- Boy, the latest changes really scr#$ed the players who paid to level their heroes
we can say
- Did you hear, they decided to fun-balance the paying customers.
Why? Because any word with 'fun' in it can't be that bad. Or can it?

Cymmina

NazgulPrime wrote:

Honestly, no one supports this ridiculous patch. I've spend real money on this game and all of it has been stolen by the devs in this update. If you want to play the character rebalance game, feel free, just learn to REIMBURSE EVERY SINGLE ISO-8 to the people who spent time and money leveling their team. How can it be remotely fair to ruin a team composition and say tough luck, all those hours and dollars are now wasted. Don't like it? Too bad, we don't care about our customers.

This sounds great for people who have other heroes to spend Iso-8 on, but for players like myself who only have "good" 2-star heroes like Wolverine, Thor, Black Widow, and Storm in usable condition, what would we spend our refunded currency on? There's not much I can do with my few 3-stars due to only having 1 cover for each or the other 2-stars I have either because they're weak or I don't have enough covers for them to be useful (Moonstone, Magneto, Captain America, Ares). Am I supposed to go back to using 1-star characters?

I used Thor and Wolverine because that's all I had thanks to RNG and being unable to place high enough in tournaments to get more than a single 3-star cover (I shoot for the 46-75 bracket since 3 2-star covers is worth more to me than a single 3-star cover). If I had some of the characters everyone is jumping to I'd probably be making the same demands.

KillStormFirst

I'd say the people who have been playing this game for several months or more all agree that the changes to Thor and Wolverine are unreasonably stupid. More and more comments and posts reflect that and while 1 dev acknowledges us, the others leave me with a specific thought after reading so many comments and almost wanting to give my own opinion (I don't because I've read soooo many similar ones) but one thing is clear about the guys who made these changes and the guys who know we hate said changes...

Unknown

Veracity wrote:

bahamut685 wrote:

Simple summary on the Thor changes: compare new Thor to Ares, Ares does similar damage (or much more) 20 levels lower.

Ares doesn't spit out 9 green tiles while he's at it. Not even Hulk or GSBW can do that. They've split old Thor into control/feeder in new Thor and damage train in Ares. Doesn't seem unreasonable, and directly comparing their damage as if Ares does anything else is misleading.

People who talk about Ares's damage should be sent videos of what their Ares is doing while on defense. Believe me, this guy is very good at finding way to kill himself needlessly, which is why he has exceptional offense to make up for his tendency to kill himself.