Goon control lameness

Unknown

So recently, with a bunch of other changes, they 'buffed' a few underused characters, making them more usable. But two of those lost a precious ability: She-Hulk and Doc Oct lost the control over enemy CD tiles, something that made them decent on PvE nodes with goons.

NOW I understand why:

http://marvel.com/news/video_games/24483/piecing_together_marvel_puzzle_quest_age_of_ultron

"The Queen of Chaos’ Green ability is Hex Bolt, which is a somewhat chaotic—of course—utility spell. Her Bolts are relatively cheap at 8 AP and destroy a single basic tile. At that point, it then destroys a number of surrounding tiles that will pop any Attack, Protect, or Strike tiles that it happens to hit. In the process, it will also give the AP from the destroyed tiles, so it can be used not only to get rid of enemy special tiles but also as a tactical AP generator. At max level, it even gains the ability for the surrounding tiles destroyed to include Countdown or other more unique special tiles, letting Scarlet Witch deal with just about anything the enemy can throw at the board."

So they nerfed two alredy weak characters utility so a NEW character is needed to deal with it on the 3* realm (OBW stands out still as the best 2* counter to CD tiles but too frail).

What's more, you need to max the power to get rid of CD tiles. Thats right, they nerfed She-Hulk and Oct so we would need 5 green on Scarlet.

D3 way to do business, make a character more desirable because of a niche feature that was removed from alredy weak characters.

THANKS OBAMA.

Unknown

They nerfed the ability to easily get rid of CD partly because of the overall balance. In case you didn't notice, almost all the 4*s need some kind of special tile to do their thing. While defense is sort of a lost cause, it's already kind of a joke that if you ever faced Falcon as say Nick Fury or Star-Lord all your powerful special tiles abilities are immediately removed the moment they use them, and I can see they certainly don't want this to be a norm where your expensive abilities like Sleight of Hand/Escape Plan doesn't even have a chance to do something useful on defense because everyone can trivially remove it. I really doubt goons were a concern because goon only nodes are still the easiest nodes overall, and villian/goon mix stuff are hard not because of goon CDs but because of the free AP. Sure, Threaten is a nasty move, but if that's all you have to worry about instead of say free Sunders from Ares, I can live with that. I'm certainly still much more willing to take my chances at dealing with Threaten than just taking a Sunder in the face every 4 turns.

Unknown

If they were overall strong of even so-so characters I would agree, but they were terrible, part of the group of 3*s that were almost never used and had at least something to add that other big guys couldnt (or not even that, LCap still gets those CDs down one after another).

They had a little niche to be worked with and it was taken away so we feel the need to have 5 green in a new character.

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

If they were overall strong of even so-so characters I would agree, but they were terrible, part of the group of 3*s that were almost never used and had at least something to add that other big guys couldnt (or not even that, LCap still gets those CDs down one after another).

They had a little niche to be worked with and it was taken away so we feel the need to have 5 green in a new character.

Captain America's special tile removal ability is probably overpowered but since he has nothing else I guess he's sort of balanced. I'm guessing at some point they'd have to figure out how to make Sentinel of Liberty actually useful and then they'll nerf back his shield juggling antics.

It's not that Doctor Octopus or She-Hulk were that overpowered but this game puts a significant premium on CD removal. She-Hulk can easily remove 3 CDs at once in most cases since characters/goons that create CDs usually don't create other special tiles (or the CD is what creates the special tiles in the first place). Doctor Octopus originally swapped 8 pairs of tiles so that's 1/4 chance to remove any CD on the board, which is pretty fair except swapping 8 pairs of tiles turn out to be pretty useless in general. When his ability increased to 16 pairs of tiles that means he has 50% chance of removing anything that fits his criteria and removing 50% of the CD on the board seems too strong given how much CD removal costs, so that was dropped. If you look at Scarlet Witch it'd be 8 AP to remove 1 tile and maybe more if you're lucky that they're all next to each other, but you're only guaranteed on one. To remove 3 of them would requier 24 AP, whereas the old Settlement will flat out remove 3 provided no other special tiles are on the board (not hard to do if you planned right). Yes it's 3 you get to choose versus 3 at random (if there are more than 3 CDs) but the cost difference is just too great. I think they really want people to get away from the 'LOL it's only a CD' but if they make even a third of the characters half as good as Captain America is at removing them, that's the only response you'll ever get for CDs.

MarvelMan

Phantron wrote:

If you look at Scarlet Witch it'd be 8 AP to remove 1 tile and maybe more if you're lucky that they're all next to each other, but you're only guaranteed on one.

Its not to remove one CD, its to remove one BASIC tile.....and hope you get a CD near it. Unless its place-able, but they have moved away from that.

Unknown

But to get rid of CD tiles trivially like this means you have to bring those guys to the fight. I see much more raw power matchups than control ones, maybe Loki being an exception for its annoyance.

Im just passing the transition level on PvP and what I see is Luke, LThor, LThor, LThor, Luke, Hulk, Ldaken, LThor, Blade, Loki, LThor, IF+Luke, Doom, Cyke, LThor, Magneto, LThor and maybe one LCap once in every 3~4 events. I have yet to see any Star-Lord, SG, MQ.

If the play if different with more Nicks and S-Ls on higher scores I wouldnt know for now, but I dont see much use for CD control outside PvE.

Its not to remove one CD, its to remove one BASIC tile.....and hope you get a CD near it. Unless its place-able, but they have moved away from that.

For me, they not saying its a random basic tiles means its placed, so you choose the basic tiles right next to it and see the CD disappear.

MarvelMan

ShionSinX wrote:

MarvelFreakinMan wrote:

Its not to remove one CD, its to remove one BASIC tile.....and hope you get a CD near it. Unless its place-able, but they have moved away from that.

For me, they not saying its a random basic tiles means its placed, so you choose the basic tiles right next to it and see the CD disappear.

True. I would love to see a tile placement char. Those, for me, introduce more strategy which the game desperately needs.

Unknown

There aren't any Star-Lords out there because back when X Force reigned supreme it was clear you don't have a realistic shot at having your CDs (or the character himself for that matter) survive against X Force so why bother wasting resources? The same applies to Nick Fury and Professor X. But even in the land of PvP where defense is difficult, we're starting to see a trend like people try to avoid Professor X becuase of his killer special tile abilty, and that's what makes variety even possible. For example, let's say a standard power team skips Professor X because they can't easily dig out his Invisibilty, but you're running Captain America or you indeed spent on Scarlet Witch and you say 'hey I can get rid of Invisibility once very easily and that's probably enough' (and Captain America can pretty much get rid of it as many times as he wants) and Professor X is indeed not all that threatening at all if you don't have to worry about his Invisibilty. Of course your team might be weak against a team that'd be afraid of Professor X, but not having one team that's just strong against everyone should be considered a good thing. Currently, while X Force's board control is unchanged, his ability to damage has been weakened significantly, enough for that special tile users to begin emerging even though special tiles generally fare very poorly against X Force. Yes X Force is still a difficult matchup, but he's no longer the most prevalent team because he has issues with an endurance type team now so maybe it's worth that risk.

Unknown

I do agree that adding variety is healthy for the game but PX tile is not a CD tile so it falls off here. CD tiles are a threat mostly on goon only nodes where while not all of them are a threat, the few that are are a big problem. Threatens, Sniper Rifles, Flamethrowers, Rockets... and that couple I singled out had a good shot at them instead of relying on OBW alone or maybe LCap if you can get him going faster.

Unknown

I have seen a wild 270 Star Lord, so they are out there. I also have a 13 cover level 70 Star Lord waiting for the ISO patch to hit.

In reality the best way to deal with CDs in 3* land has always been L.Cap. 2 abilities that overwrite, he's just top notch in PvE. It does suck that She Hulk and Doc Ock lost their CD control ability, espeically since that was originally what Doc Ock was all about, and to see a new character come out with BOTH CD removal AND AP generation makes me think they took those abilities off of certain characters specifically to make SW that much more desirable. A shame really, since with CD control new She Hulk would be a PvE monster. Now she's just even more piles of Meh.

Nonce Equitaur 2

If you prefer solutions over complaints, over at Countdown Management I list all the ways I know of to manage countdowns.

Unknown

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

If you prefer solutions over complaints, over at Countdown Management I list all the ways I know of to manage countdowns.

I did take a quick look there but one thing to be noted is how good something is dealing with this specifit threat on the enviroment you need it. A couple goons shoting pistols or threats every round (two low cost goon powers) cant be managed by the ones like LCap that need up to four matches of red or blue to start going and then one tile at a time until you build up AP again, and multiple CDs around are seen on few cases on PvP (Kingpin and Loki jump out of my head).

Because most of the times you need to deal with multiple CDs are on PvE, you can rely on OBW. But then having one 2* as the best counter isnt my idea of ideal as 3*s should be superior in every case, maybe just not outclassed on 100% of times in one character but at least someone doing it better. The ones doing it were the couple of the least used characters on 3* realm (together with beast) and they just lost this niche.

What I mean is: 2* wolverine has a 3k nuke on 2*, but while it is good on his tier there are better damage dealers, both healthyer and with a better cost-effective power on 3*s, so hes ok. But OBW should have a couterpart better at this on 3* and now she doesnt, because even SW cant deal with a large amount of CDs at same time. The closest were She-Hulk with 3 and Oct with potentially all, and we went down to one or two again on SW.

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

If you prefer solutions over complaints, over at Countdown Management I list all the ways I know of to manage countdowns.

I did take a quick look there but one thing to be noted is how good something is dealing with this specifit threat on the enviroment you need it. A couple goons shoting pistols or threats every round (two low cost goon powers) cant be managed by the ones like LCap that need up to four matches of red or blue to start going and then one tile at a time until you build up AP again, and multiple CDs around are seen on few cases on PvP (Kingpin and Loki jump out of my head).

Because most of the times you need to deal with multiple CDs are on PvE, you can rely on OBW. But then having one 2* as the best counter isnt my idea of ideal as 3*s should be superior in every case, maybe just not outclassed on 100% of times in one character but at least someone doing it better. The ones doing it were the couple of the least used characters on 3* realm (together with beast) and they just lost this niche.

What I mean is: 2* wolverine has a 3k nuke on 2*, but while it is good on his tier there are better damage dealers, both healthyer and with a better cost-effective power on 3*s, so hes ok. But OBW should have a couterpart better at this on 3* and now she doesnt, because even SW cant deal with a large amount of CDs at same time. The closest were She-Hulk with 3 and Oct with potentially all, and we went down to one or two again on SW.

That's because OBW's AP steal is overpowered, but it's allowed to exist because she's not a 3*. Cap is faster and more reliable when you have someone boosting him like OBW, MNMags, or even Storm. Cap is generally bulky enough to take one pistol round.

Unknown

But if there are 2 pistol goons around it means one tile per round and you need a lot of AP early, so LCap isnt a better option over OBW. After you have his blue out it slows down because of the stun but still a few rounds to get it back and the other goon will fire it every other round. And, unless you soft leveled your LCap, OBW will not steal AP on blue matches to make it faster. She still the goddess and the other good-to-better options were removed.

Unknown

ShionSinX wrote:

But if there are 2 pistol goons around it means one tile per round and you need a lot of AP early, so LCap isnt a better option over OBW. After you have his blue out it slows down because of the stun but still a few rounds to get it back and the other goon will fire it every other round. And, unless you soft leveled your LCap, OBW will not steal AP on blue matches to make it faster. She still the goddess and the other good-to-better options were removed.

Pistol is one of the hardest ability to deal with since it's so cheap and has such a short duration. Thankfully usually there's someone else putting a more manageable yellow CD in the Maggia family. I remember not being able to stop all the Pistol in a triple Thug node with pre nerf Magneto, who can take approximately 25 extra turns and overwrite any 2 CD for 5 blue, but there will still be times where a Pistol will slip through. If you're fighting a typical Muscle + Thug X 2 node, one of the key point is don't kill the Muscle once your board is somewhat under control, because it is no longer going to be under control once the Muscle is downed and you have a Pistol each turn. Now if the Muscle is about to drop a Tommy Gun on you with 5 strike tiles out you might not have a choice, but as long as you can deal with the Tommy Gun (and hopefully not get any cascade from the Threaten resolving) you want that Muscle hogging the yellow AP for Threaten instead.

Unknown

On muscles case I just make sure that the tile disappearing isnt making any match happen, even at the top; if there are two tiles of same color up there, then its a potential match and that will hurt a lot. In those cases I use OBW blue, but if no match is possible I ignore that tile and let it make the strike tiles as they will not harm at all. Tommy Gun must always be stopped tho, because even unboosted by strikes, on higher levels they pack a punch on the low HP pool OBW has. There is when someone like She-Hulk with her pool thrice as bigger than OBW can be more handy.