The Quicksilver - Prof X - Iron Fist Engine

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Professor X's ability is problematic because normally match 5s aren't that common even with strong board shaking abilities so they made his passive pretty powerful to go with a relatively rare occurrence, and then you have stuff like Idle Hands or IFoKL that is just an incredibly strong board manipulator. On the other hand, IFoKL is already quite insane by itself as you can do stuff like IFoKL into 3 Rage of the Panthers on a good board that doesn't even require anything fancy, so I think it is more likely that you got the enablers (in this case, IFoKL) nerfed instead of Master Plan. I don't think Idle Hands is the problem here because it's just not reliable to get enough bubbles to get it cheap enough and if you're collecting black the normal way that'd still take quite a while to get it going.

So its a combination of all three and just a really strong combo without the seemingly weak power that QS provides but its enough to ramp the combo up to 11.

whitecat31

Believe me when I say this, that BagSilver (**** for short) is not the problem.
The issue is Professor X. The dev team was so proud of Professor X, that they nerfed all the other engines that could exploit it.
They turned Mystique into Mystaque. They turned the 2star Magneto into Magnerfo. They nerfed Iron fists (IF for short).
They nerfed BagSilver before release.
They even slightly nerfed Professor X.
Then they nerfed boost amounts.
They even raise many characters hit points.
The one character that could counter balance Professor X, called X-force they even nerfed, pissing off tons of veterans.
They have done everything possible to make Professor X's wheel chair super shiny.
Why? The best guess is players will buy Professor X covers, level him up, and then MPQ will laugh to the bank as they nerf Professor X, and then say "this too shall pass."
There is two types of marketing techniques. There is the slash and burn policy, and there is a long term cater to customer policy. This too shall pass, is the justification of the "slash and burn" policy.

One thing about this is the three characters in question are all relatively new, and most likely are not fully covered by well over 99% of the player population.
So what MPQ will do, is wait for the metrics, to say it is over used, and then the nerf bat will come. Since less than 1 percent of the population has this setup, be sure to abuse it.
Please be forewarned though, if something is good, and fun, MPQ will destroy it.

GrumpySmurf1002

papa07 wrote:

Their nerfing metrics don't care if you have him at a useable level. The nerf decision is made when people stop buying his covers and they have milked all the money out of us that they can. Prof X should have at least 2 more months before they cripple him.

While this is the fun conspiracy answer, all signs point to the nerfs actually coming from skewed values in their usage metrics.

If you harken back to the days where Sentry dominated the landscape, the devs were actually a bit confused about whether to address Sentry. He had such niche usage (i.e. High-end PvP) that he wasn't really on their radar, his usage numbers were quite low. This differed from the Spidey/cMags usage (as I understand it), because those two dominated the landscape, especially in high-scaled PvE.

It was at that point that the Devs switched their thought process, putting a bigger focus on what was happening at the top of the food chain. If I had to guess, this is when they started really focusing on match length as a key value for balancing. This is why, IMO, 4Thor got hit, and then XForce right behind it, because those two dominated the landscape, and were quick about it too.

Obviously there are other things that go into "should we nerf it," because Fist, Quicksilver and Professor all got hit before there were really any metrics to begin with. But overall, if everyone gravitates towards one team/character at the top, you can expect a change.

And yes, that would mean if Prof X is that meta-changing that people start covering him quickly and he pops up everywhere, he'll get hit with the bat quickly, and it will appear it was done because the money already came in.

Malcrof

whitecat31 wrote:

Believe me when I say this, that BagSilver (**** for short) is not the problem.
The issue is Professor X. The dev team was so proud of Professor X, that they nerfed all the other engines that could exploit it.
They turned Mystique into Mystaque. They turned the 2star Magneto into Magnerfo. They nerfed Iron fists (IF for short).
They nerfed BagSilver before release.
They even slightly nerfed Professor X.
Then they nerfed boost amounts.
They even raise many characters hit points.
The one character that could counter balance Professor X, called X-force they even nerfed, pissing off tons of veterans.
They have done everything possible to make Professor X's wheel chair super shiny.
Why? The best guess is players will buy Professor X covers, level him up, and then MPQ will laugh to the bank as they nerf Professor X, and then say "this too shall pass."
There is two types of marketing techniques. There is the slash and burn policy, and there is a long term cater to customer policy. This too shall pass, is the justification of the "slash and burn" policy.

One thing about this is the three characters in question are all relatively new, and most likely are not fully covered by well over 99% of the player population.
So what MPQ will do, is wait for the metrics, to say it is over used, and then the nerf bat will come. Since less than 1 percent of the population has this setup, be sure to abuse it.
Please be forewarned though, if something is good, and fun, MPQ will destroy it.

With Kingpin just released and Hulkbuster on the way, i think there is a long term plan for 4stars that we have to wait and see. The nerf to green on XF may be due to the fact that with an upcoming 4* release, no-one will use it compared to said new char's green... you never know.

Unknown

There has been a recent crackdown on the big AP generators and outside of The Hood, the big AP generators get their AP by making big matches. Professor X rewards you for making big matches, so this means any top AP generator gets double rewarded as they're already making big matches and they also get the benefit from Master Plan if the big match turns out to be a match 5. IFoKL is always quite overpowered even by itself, and no one should be surprised that an ability that often matches half of the board would be even better with Professor X on your side. The third person almost doesn't matter as I remember having cases like where you have 25 black AP, use Surgical Strike on 2 tiles, and then have 13 black AP and can't use Surgical Strike because there are no tiles to use it on the board (the game won't let you do it) and have my combo fizzle out and I started questioning if bringing X Force was even the best idea since Surgical Strike doesn't work when you end up with 30 black AP.

GuntherBlobel

Nonce, this is all your fault! (Also, the Devs... they might have a hand in it too.)

Seriously, it kinda is. Ever since you've been encouraging the Devs to fill out the color wheel... well... they've been doing that. But to avoid the stereotyped , , and , , characters, they've all but abandoned their rules about pairing color themes with ability mechanics. Then you left the Forum and weren't here to point out all the new design problems it has created! Why did you do this to us?

Just a little hint to the Devs, but you can not design abilities with tile manipulation after designing a 5 --> 9 ability! Ever. It's over: can be the new or even . That's fine. Stick to that. Fill out the color wheel a little. Maybe can be another place for interesting -like abilities, but then you need to fix Infiltration once and for all. Never can --> or --> . Write down the rules and live by them.

Change idle hands to , just like every other interesting ability in the game. You can even lower the AP cost. Design rules: Devs made them for a reason (and it wasn't just to break them!)

(Also, AP ceilings at 30 exist for a reason. AP floors should as well.)
(Also, I have no idea what to do about the trend in designing increasingly powerful passives. Color themes can't always save you there.)

reckless442

Here's a secret. GSBW is better than Iron Fist. Once you have her purple, you can almost certainly get two match-5s -- so match damage, 8k damage from Prof X, plus 8 black AP for QS, which you can often use to make another match-5. Oh, and 10+ green can be used for QS's or GSBW's green. That sequence is usually enough to take down a full-strength 4Thor.

GrumpySmurf1002

reckless442 wrote:

Here's a secret. GSBW is better than Iron Fist. Once you have her purple, you can almost certainly get two match-5s -- so match damage, 8k damage from Prof X, plus 8 black AP for QS, which you can often use to make another match-5. Oh, and 10+ green can be used for QS's or GSBW's green. That sequence is usually enough to take down a full-strength 4Thor.

With this combination Prof X is already underleveled (only way for Quicksilver black to be priority), so with GSBW, you're generating purple from X's blue. This doesn't need anyone else, it feeds itself into Sniper Rifles.

reckless442

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

reckless442 wrote:

Here's a secret. GSBW is better than Iron Fist. Once you have her purple, you can almost certainly get two match-5s -- so match damage, 8k damage from Prof X, plus 8 black AP for QS, which you can often use to make another match-5. Oh, and 10+ green can be used for QS's or GSBW's green. That sequence is usually enough to take down a full-strength 4Thor.

With this combination Prof X is already underleveled (only way for Quicksilver black to be priority), so with GSBW, you're generating purple from X's blue. This doesn't need anyone else, it feeds itself into Sniper Rifles.

You have to keep Porf X underleveled for Nonce's plan to work, and he has Prof X feeding four black AP too, so I assumed he was thinking Quicksilver was buffed of still higher than Iron Fist. In my equation, quicksilver is getting black the same way it is with Nonce's thinking. If his Iron Fist is the stronger character, he would be generating four green ap from a match-5, which isn't nearly as useful as black.

john1620b

reckless442 wrote:

Here's a secret. GSBW is better than Iron Fist. Once you have her purple, you can almost certainly get two match-5s -- so match damage, 8k damage from Prof X, plus 8 black AP for QS, which you can often use to make another match-5. Oh, and 10+ green can be used for QS's or GSBW's green. That sequence is usually enough to take down a full-strength 4Thor.

Also, doesn't this require that QS be leveled higher than GSBW, since Prof. X's AP generation is random when there is a "strongest color" tie? I don't have a fully-covered Prof. X to test.

NorthernPolarity

whitecat31 wrote:

They nerfed BagSilver before release.

My biggest pet peeve MPQ related is people using prerelease information as ammunition against the devs, especially given how Ice posts in every thread that the character is subject to change. Maybe the devs should just stop giving everyone prerelease information, since if all it does is give people ammo to spew nonsense like this, then the forum doesn't deserve to have prerelease information in the first place. I'm not going to comment about the rest of your conspiracy theory, but leave prerelease information out of it.

Unknown

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

And yes, that would mean if Prof X is that meta-changing that people start covering him quickly and he pops up everywhere, he'll get hit with the bat quickly, and it will appear it was done because the money already came in.

It's a chicken or egg question, does the nerf come because the metrics are increasing (people buying and using) or because people are done buying (and they have the excuse of the data). Either way, same end result and same reason - lack of game knowledge and lack of ability to understand character interaction. It's almost as if they are releasing characters too fast to understand how they will work in the game.

Azoic

I was having fun with QS and Profx in sim (paired with Cyc once and cmags another). They will be great in pve; however, the AI is horrible with placing any sort of tile, such as mmags and gsbw...and now QS. Fighting against him, I have yet to see a switched tile interrupt any of my tiles and/or even make a match! So the AI will not be setting off master plan with this, unless it is a pure accident.

babinro

rednailz wrote:

Gowaderacer wrote:

You've discovered an exploit with Quicksilver! Here comes the nerf bat!

PX will get the nerf first, since he's a 4*

How exactly would a Xavier nerf change anything?

If this is indeed a somewhat winfinite combo (I don't have first hand experience with this yet so I don't have a clear understanding of exactly how good this build is) then the fact that you seemily chain constant crits should be the focal point. Xavier simply speeds up the process and nerfing him to deal 2000 bonus damage on a crit wouldn't change much.

Seems to me the CORE of the problem lies with just how easily spammable Iron Fist's purple has become. Every other colour spam skill costs at LEAST 7AP and has no additional benefit attached to it.
Why not make Fists purple cost 8AP and deal conditional 5000 damage?

Edit: I didn't realize that Xavier's broken part of this combo might be his generating 4 bonus AP rather than his damage boost. I have nothing at all against nerfing that part of his skill. You could just as easily make covers 1-4 generate 0 bonus AP with cover #5 generate 2. No clue if that'd be enough to 'fix' the problem but just thinking aloud. Again, no hands on with this one so my opinions at this stage are speculative. This doesn't get Fist's spammable purple off the hook though...it's always been a bit problematic to the point where there's too much potential for it to break the game in the future.

Unknown

arktos1971 wrote:

Wish you had contacted me first before you made your test. I was one of your guinea pig...

I, too, was hit by the Nonce assault engine!

At first when he queued up in mine, I was wondering if ProfX was proc'ing the IF passive. Then I just said forget it b/c the IF Purple ability is so cheap anyways. Can see ProfX generating quite a few defensive wins w/ luck cascades and Master Plan.

Unknown

rednailz wrote:

Gowaderacer wrote:

You've discovered an exploit with Quicksilver! Here comes the nerf bat!

PX will get the nerf first, since he's a 4*

nah, they'll nerf 2*Mag for good measure

my response to this subject:

raisinbman wrote:

I've felt this way for a long time....Professor X's match-5 is supposed to be this 'forbidden fruit' skill where you can only get to it 'randomly' which is why they nerfed all match-5ers the way they did. Problem is, setting up a match 5 is too lenient for what the ability does. Others have said it and I have too they shoulda just changed his match 5 thing instead of breaking everyone else. Suprised they nerfed him the way they did.

And Iron Fist is weird. Maybe they didn't want to nerf alot of characters at once. And so they only lightly tapped him with the nerfbat. But it says something when you nerf a character and they're STILL the top 3* in the game(and better than many of the nerfed 4*). I don't know how Iron Fist got off without getting nerfed as badly especially when they seemed to want to EXTERMINATE ALL LIFE errr AP tricks.

I only hope that because me investing in Iron Fist isn't a "if" but "when" it'll be before he's nerfed into oblivion. I'd say the same thing about Charles, but 4* are out of my reach.

And partly this makes me mad because it just seems like they nerfed Magstorm to keep it out of the reach of 2* players' hands(the majority of players) while if you have Professor X/Iron Fist(probably a veteran or pay to play), you get a free pass to do what everyone else was doing just because less people are doing it.

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

papa07 wrote:

Their nerfing metrics don't care if you have him at a useable level. The nerf decision is made when people stop buying his covers and they have milked all the money out of us that they can. Prof X should have at least 2 more months before they cripple him.

While this is the fun conspiracy answer, all signs point to the nerfs actually coming from skewed values in their usage metrics.

If you harken back to the days where Sentry dominated the landscape, the devs were actually a bit confused about whether to address Sentry. He had such niche usage (i.e. High-end PvP) that he wasn't really on their radar, his usage numbers were quite low. This differed from the Spidey/cMags usage (as I understand it), because those two dominated the landscape, especially in high-scaled PvE.

It was at that point that the Devs switched their thought process, putting a bigger focus on what was happening at the top of the food chain. If I had to guess, this is when they started really focusing on match length as a key value for balancing. This is why, IMO, 4Thor got hit, and then XForce right behind it, because those two dominated the landscape, and were quick about it too.

Obviously there are other things that go into "should we nerf it," because Fist, Quicksilver and Professor all got hit before there were really any metrics to begin with. But overall, if everyone gravitates towards one team/character at the top, you can expect a change.

And yes, that would mean if Prof X is that meta-changing that people start covering him quickly and he pops up everywhere, he'll get hit with the bat quickly, and it will appear it was done because the money already came in.

he's going to get the bat. They don't like it when you do AP tricks in PVE so therefore Professor X is dead

Malcrof wrote:

whitecat31 wrote:

Believe me when I say this, that BagSilver (**** for short) is not the problem.
The issue is Professor X. The dev team was so proud of Professor X, that they nerfed all the other engines that could exploit it.
They turned Mystique into Mystaque. They turned the 2star Magneto into Magnerfo. They nerfed Iron fists (IF for short).
They nerfed BagSilver before release.
They even slightly nerfed Professor X.
Then they nerfed boost amounts.
They even raise many characters hit points.
The one character that could counter balance Professor X, called X-force they even nerfed, pissing off tons of veterans.
They have done everything possible to make Professor X's wheel chair super shiny.
Why? The best guess is players will buy Professor X covers, level him up, and then MPQ will laugh to the bank as they nerf Professor X, and then say "this too shall pass."
There is two types of marketing techniques. There is the slash and burn policy, and there is a long term cater to customer policy. This too shall pass, is the justification of the "slash and burn" policy.

One thing about this is the three characters in question are all relatively new, and most likely are not fully covered by well over 99% of the player population.
So what MPQ will do, is wait for the metrics, to say it is over used, and then the nerf bat will come. Since less than 1 percent of the population has this setup, be sure to abuse it.
Please be forewarned though, if something is good, and fun, MPQ will destroy it.

With Kingpin just released and Hulkbuster on the way, i think there is a long term plan for 4stars that we have to wait and see. The nerf to green on XF may be due to the fact that with an upcoming 4* release, no-one will use it compared to said new char's green... you never know.

There is no long term plan. They just release characters willy nilly and SOME work well and others are "What were you thinking"?

Why did they release 3 characters in a row when 2 weren't time sensitive(Kingpin was, Quicksilver/Kamala weren't) and now we have 2 events that have nothing of value.

reckless442 wrote:

Here's a secret. GSBW is better than Iron Fist. Once you have her purple, you can almost certainly get two match-5s -- so match damage, 8k damage from Prof X, plus 8 black AP for QS, which you can often use to make another match-5. Oh, and 10+ green can be used for QS's or GSBW's green. That sequence is usually enough to take down a full-strength 4Thor.

She's gonna get nerfed, too - after all she has the 3* version of Polarity shift

NorthernPolarity wrote:

whitecat31 wrote:

They nerfed BagSilver before release.

My biggest pet peeve MPQ related is people using prerelease information as ammunition against the devs, especially given how Ice posts in every thread that the character is subject to change. Maybe the devs should just stop giving everyone prerelease information, since if all it does is give people ammo to spew nonsense like this, then the forum doesn't deserve to have prerelease information in the first place. I'm not going to comment about the rest of your conspiracy theory, but leave prerelease information out of it.

Don't stop giving info, we use it to stop Iron Fist 1.0 from happening(almost)

Wonko33

whitecat31 wrote:

Believe me when I say this, that BagSilver (**** for short) is not the problem.
The issue is Professor X. The dev team was so proud of Professor X, that they nerfed all the other engines that could exploit it.

Correction, they nerfed every engines that we had covered and leveled- they will leave the other ones intact until we all buy the covers then nerf ProfX

Unknown

Seriously, try to envision a character that can make a lot of match 5s that wouldn't be overpowered. Prof X is a 'win more' mechanism but he's not really the enabler. Anyone who can get Master Plan going is pretty much already overpowered. Now Master Plan does magnify the advantage but Iron Fist was always capable of matching away half of the board for ridiculous AP gains.

over_clocked

Yup, Iron Fist is the problem here. That said I got his 5th purple recently. That said, he should be properly nerfed - pardon, balanced - before it gets out of hand (he also enables X-Force, Black Panther, Luke Cage and Mystique, not to mention 5 purple for doing that kind of damage is bonkers, condition or not). No idea why they didn't do it properly the first time, better render him average than have players get enraged twice.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

Seriously, try to envision a character that can make a lot of match 5s that wouldn't be overpowered. Prof X is a 'win more' mechanism but he's not really the enabler. Anyone who can get Master Plan going is pretty much already overpowered. Now Master Plan does magnify the advantage but Iron Fist was always capable of matching away half of the board for ridiculous AP gains.

Then you don't know what an enabler is. An ability that gives you free ap for doing something you'd like to be doing any way is basically the definition of an enabler.

PX blue is the issue here. It makes it so any board manipulation skill on a character's strong color has an immediate 4 ap discount on it for every critical it generates. If the skill costs less than the number of crits it can generate x4ap, this is a closed loop. To make things better, the same skill provides extreme acceleration in the kill condition, which means the loop doesn't even nees to be closed effectively - as long as it can generate at least one critical, it's usually going to be enough to be worth using regularly.