The 4* nerfs to xforce and 4or make sense

TheOncomingStorm

I was thinking, I think I might understand the 4* nerfs. I think when the tier was smaller, you needed stronger 4*s to make up for the lack of diversity. Now, there is more diversity for the 4* tier to stand on its own, you no longer need just 2 characters to carry the entire load. In conjunction with the buffs to other 4*s and after seeing px and kp, it makes more sense to me.

I'm not saying the nerfs were done right. I'm just saying the sudden timing of them and the 4* buffs make more sense. In the haunting words of np, they're balancing the meta game. I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds correct every time he says it.

I just don't know why they couldn't just explain it that way if that is what was really happening.

Dter

The nerfs may have been necessary but they were over nerfed to much and are now just glorified 3* with bigger health pools. 4hor got off easy compared to xforce.

The real question is which 4* will become the new meta and how badly will they nerf them once people put resources into them. Unless all the top players are quitting which seems to be the vibe on the forums and on Line.

Mikaveus

I can understand the uproar, but this was a necessary step to make the 4* realm bigger than just 2 characters. I'm curious how Invisible Woman and Elektra respond to their buffs.

Still, my sympathies for those who only recently started to get mileage out of X-Force. I hope the compensation is substantial.

Omega Blacc

I agree with OP.

What did we honestly expect? There were 2 characters so blatantly overpowered that everyone had to have them just to compete. As it is, I have to use XF in every PvP just to burn 200+ HP to make Top 25. I'm kinda excited that I can try different characters and still have a decent chance to score in PvP.

I can find a way for X Force to be effective. He'll still create havoc when paired with color changers and Surgical Strike. XForce will still ruin anyone's tactics..you just can't murder your opponent in 4 moves anymore. Big deal. Downside is that lvl220 isn't going to cut it anymore. Gonna have to level him for higher health.

I'm actually looking forward to the IW buff. Will be nice to effectively use her now.

Pylgrim

I've been thinking, and I have arrived to the conclusion that the super-nerf to X-Force's green and black is due mostly to it being the ability all other abilities measured to (and failed). Every single new character with a green or black ability got comments on the line of "yeah, not bad, but I don't see myself ever playing this over X-Force." Well, now his green is so mediocre (not bad) that people will actually feel encouraged to try to use other green users. Had it been a lesser nerf, people would just complain, but keep using him forever and ever.

Lee T

TheOncomingStorm wrote:

In the haunting words of np, they're balancing the meta game. I don't know exactly what that means, but it sounds correct every time he says it.

Metagaming is analysing the game and your opponents to bring the best counter. When everyone brings scissors, bring a rock. Since bringing a rock is the winning strategy, more people will bring rocks, the next smart guy will bring paper to a scissor deprived land full of rocks.

The corolary is "local meta", people won't play the game the same way in every area and what may be the winning strategy in Sidney may not hold a candle in Berlin.

It's a thing CCG and miniature wargames tournament players live by. Ignore the meta and you'll fight an uphill battle. Since you don't know your opponent's army/deck beforehand, guessing the game in advance is a definite advantage.

There is no need for much meta anlysis in MPQ, there is no tournaments and secret deck/army lists, and no local meta either since we're all tucked in the same time slices.

It does not apply in this case, they're trying to balance the game as it is. Which doesn't mean you're wrong though, the reason is indeed very probably a rebalancing of 4* character land (which for the developers includes characters we won't know about for months).

Unknown

This is more than nerfs. This is telling the customers that have paid money up to this point that their patronage isn't needed anymore. Every action they have done since the Thor nerf is just a massive **** you to the customers that have paid their wages for about 500 days.

Edit: They could have tried to come up with a way to appease their existing customers and the ones that will inevitably follow from the Avengers marketing drive. But that would involve spending the money they've received from us poor saps, instead of pocketing it and taking the easy option.


Edit 2: you greedy shameless filth.

Raffoon

So instead of gutting them both, they could have nerfed them slightly and buffed the other 4 stars. Problem solved.

ThatOneGuyjp189512

the literal point of tiers in this game(or any other game) is to differentiate them from their peers. 2*'s are SUPPOSED to be more powerful than 1*, 3*'s are SUPPOSED to be more powerful than 2*'s, and lastly, 4*'s are SUPPOSED to be more powerful than 3*'s. Evidently this concept illudes the devs, they don't see that 4*'s are supposed to be more powerful than 3*'s, that they shouldn't simply be 3*'s with more health(and with the X-Force nerf...well he's a low tier THREE star now). otherwise what's the point of introducing so many 4*'s when all they'll ever be is trophies?(PX and Kingpin notwithstanding) like....X-Force was incredibly powerful, no denying that, but wasn't the point of him being a 4* character to be more powerful than any 3*? like...you don't see people running 2*'s into the 3* stage, but yet here we are, running tons of 3*'s into what is supposed to be the 4* stage. They're alienating every single good playing in the game by doing this, catering to the people who play for a couple months get bored and quit, they seem to be deliberately punishing us vets who have diverse rosters, the very people who've been with this game from the beginning....and it's just getting harder and harder to justify playing it every day when they make stupid decisions like this.

Unknown

Anyone thinking X-force is a low-tier three star now probably needs to check how their tiers are set up.

TheOncomingStorm

I'll reiterate one point I made that some people are missing. I am not saying the nerfs were done correctly. My official stand on the nerfs and buffs is that i have no comment. (My opinion in the past how they should be nerfed is well documented though.)

I'm simply saying in the op that the timing of the nerfs is not arbitrary. There is a reason that they picked now to make these changes.

Unknown

Jester Day wrote:

Anyone thinking X-force is a low-tier three star now probably needs to check how their tiers are set up.

Really? Because he is basically Groot now. Green board shake at aprox 250 damage per AP? Check. 11 cost power that does about 8000 damage (8 triggers on 4 strike tiles, not hard to do) check. Yellow self heal that can also cause cascades and damage? Check. 10,000 range HP? Check. Low tier 3*? Check.

Mikaveus

I know emotions are raw right now and that's due to the heavy investment for a 4* character like X-Force. Heavy on ISO and heavy on HP. Heavy on dollars for those doing the spending and heavy on time for those doing the playing. However, we all knew this was coming. The warning signs were all there. X-Force has reigned for 6 months. SIX MONTHS. If that doesn't scream OP, then I don't know what does. Not even Classic Mags, Sentry, or Spidey lasted that long.

And we all knew it was Surgical Strike that would be targeted. That ability was wicked strong.

"Hey, this ability is going to wipe the board of your strongest tile."
"Oh, that's impressive."
"And then it's going to drain your strongest AP pool."
"Wait, what? Okay, I guess there's still a chan-"
"And now it's going to generate AP from the destroyed tiles while draining your strongest AP pool."
"****?!"
"BTW it's doing 500 damage per tile."
"..........."
"Yeah, you're done."

Bottom line, this change was happening. The parties I feel the most sympathy for are those who recently invested in the character and never had a chance to reap the benefits. From reading his new specs, it doesn't sound like he got nerfed too badly. They only "fixed" the ability that made him OP to begin with. Surgical Strike does even more damage now and still removes the opponents' strongest tiles, but it doesn't signal the end game like it used to. And his yellow ability has become as much about inflicting damage as it is about healing. The guy won't be unplayable. I think X-Force's nerf will be closer to Classic Mags and less like Spidey or Sentry.

Unknown

Lerysh wrote:

Jester Day wrote:

Anyone thinking X-force is a low-tier three star now probably needs to check how their tiers are set up.

Really? Because he is basically Groot now. Green board shake at aprox 250 damage per AP? Check. 11 cost power that does about 8000 damage (8 triggers on 4 strike tiles, not hard to do) check. Yellow self heal that can also cause cascades and damage? Check. 10,000 range HP? Check. Low tier 3*? Check.

Keep telling yourself that. That does in no way make it true. There are substantial differences in how these characters play out. 11 cost power that requires setup vs 11 power that requires no setup. Mostly controllable healing.

And that isn't even touching the fact that you might need to take a look at how your subjective tiers are set up, which was my point.

Unknown

At this point they should just do away with the concept of a star rating. After the change every cover will practically be the same and will only exist to slow play down.

Dragon_Nexus

Raffoon wrote:

So instead of gutting them both, they could have nerfed them slightly and buffed the other 4 stars. Problem solved.

So you make the whole 4* roster over powered as opposed to making the two over powered characters more in line with the rest of their group so all options are open?

Seems legit.

dkffiv

Mikaveus wrote:

I can understand the uproar, but this was a necessary step to make the 4* realm bigger than just 2 characters. I'm curious how Invisible Woman and Elektra respond to their buffs.

Still, my sympathies for those who only recently started to get mileage out of X-Force. I hope the compensation is substantial.

Both are still terrible. IW needs 19 AP and Elektra needs 14 AP to get going, some of the slowest characters available. Even when they do get going their skills aren't game ending. LThor is better than both of them unless you're bringing Elektra to specifically counter a strike tile user (and you never bring hard counters in PvP because you will get reamed by defensive losses). Xforce could be played against, in Black Vortex I brought Gamora over him and won. In Simulator fights against him where I couldn't field my own I beat him handedly. The only truly uncounterable character in this game is Hood and they still haven't addressed that for PvE. Xforce and 4hor were nerfed because players weren't taking enough damage / buying enough kits, not for "balance" reasons.

I'd argue IF is technically the most broken character in the game right now (even before the Xforce nerf even hits), generating 7 tiles for 5 AP is stupid. The fact that he can't use his own black is moot, bring any other character and you'll be doing massive damage. IF / Cage with 5/3/5 Cage will probably be the fastest combo now.

Dragon_Nexus wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

So instead of gutting them both, they could have nerfed them slightly and buffed the other 4 stars. Problem solved.

So you make the whole 4* roster over powered as opposed to making the two over powered characters more in line with the rest of their group so all options are open?

Seems legit.

Isn't that exactly what they're trying to do with 3*s? By your logic they should gut LThor down to Beast/Rag tier so I can field Psylocke and Doc Oc against him. 2* rosters would have an easier time against him too.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

I'd argue IF is technically the most broken character in the game right now (even before the Xforce nerf even hits), generating 7 tiles for 5 AP is stupid. The fact that he can't use his own black is moot, bring any other character and you'll be doing massive damage. IF / Cage with 5/3/5 Cage will probably be the fastest combo now.

Even if you don't have a black user for a 5 investment you'll probably "turn on" two great abilites for the rest of the battle, which is much, much better than you get with All Tied Up or the new Mutagenic Breakthrough

puppychow

dkffiv wrote:

I'd argue IF is technically the most broken character in the game right now (even before the Xforce nerf even hits), generating 7 tiles for 5 AP is stupid. The fact that he can't use his own black is moot, bring any other character and you'll be doing massive damage. IF / Cage with 5/3/5 Cage will probably be the fastest combo now.

Yes and no. The problem w/ using IF/Cage is that their passive animation bogs the game down a lot. So while they may be the fastest combo to trigger, they won't necessarily result in fast matches between hops.

That being said, if you're entering a match w/ IF/Cage/XF and 4 pur/bk, you might be able to trigger surgical strike quickly, depending on the board and the opposing team.

dkffiv

puppychow wrote:

dkffiv wrote:

I'd argue IF is technically the most broken character in the game right now (even before the Xforce nerf even hits), generating 7 tiles for 5 AP is stupid. The fact that he can't use his own black is moot, bring any other character and you'll be doing massive damage. IF / Cage with 5/3/5 Cage will probably be the fastest combo now.

Yes and no. The problem w/ using IF/Cage is that their passive animation bogs the game down a lot. So while they may be the fastest combo to trigger, they won't necessarily result in fast matches between hops.

That being said, if you're entering a match w/ IF/Cage/XF and 4 pur/bk, you might be able to trigger surgical strike quickly, depending on the board and the opposing team.

This is looking into the post Xforce nerf world. Unless their strongest color is black you wouldn't want to field Wolverine. Cage/IF looks like fast damage and stuns/control. If they aren't getting nerfed, which I see no mention of in the notes, I can't really think of anyone else with a better combo.

Unknown

Jester Day wrote:

Lerysh wrote:

Jester Day wrote:

Anyone thinking X-force is a low-tier three star now probably needs to check how their tiers are set up.

Really? Because he is basically Groot now. Green board shake at aprox 250 damage per AP? Check. 11 cost power that does about 8000 damage (8 triggers on 4 strike tiles, not hard to do) check. Yellow self heal that can also cause cascades and damage? Check. 10,000 range HP? Check. Low tier 3*? Check.

Keep telling yourself that. That does in no way make it true. There are substantial differences in how these characters play out. 11 cost power that requires setup vs 11 power that requires no setup. Mostly controllable healing.

And that isn't even touching the fact that you might need to take a look at how your subjective tiers are set up, which was my point.

I'm not sure what your point is then. All ranking systems are subjective. That XF got knocked down way below "About 160% strength of a 3*" is not subjective, it's comparative analysis. Is he better than Groot? Probably. Is he 60% better than Groot? No. And Groot's even a tank. XF deserves to be 60% better than Patch or Daken and I'm not sure that he is now.