Strongest Color problems and solutions

Nonce Equitaur 2

There are several characters who have powers that involve Strongest Color. Here they are:

Jean Grey -- Psychic Feedback
Kingpin -- The Fisk Defense
Nick Fury -- Escape Plan
Professor X -- Master Plan
Wolverine 4 -- Surgical Strike
Black Panther -- Rage of the Panther
Blade -- Nightstalker
Deadpool 4 -- Countdown to What?

Seemingly, this would allow a character to partially nullify the enemy team's most dangerous attack. Usually, the strongest color can be determined by finding the highest color match strength of the enemy opponents, with ties going to the opponent that was out front. As opponents are stunned or downed, the strongest color is changed. It's tedious to check, and could easily be shown by ... a color dot somewhere ... bolding the color in the enemy AP screen ... in the in-battle power description, adding the color ... putting the appropriate gem over the enemy character with the strongest color.

For many characters, the "strongest color" isn't done fairly. A weak power or a passive power is given as their strong color, which serves to protect their more powerful attacks. Here are the characters that get a buff from this unfair approach. For each, I list their strongest color, and also give what their strongest color should not be. It's particularly bad for Venom with strongest color , and no power.

Strongest color should be ...
not -- Elektra
not -- Invisible Woman
not -- Professor X
not -- Wolverine 4
not -- Black Panther
not -- Captain America
not -- Captain Marvel 3
not -- Colossus
not -- Daken
not -- Daredevil
not -- Falcon
not -- Iron Fist
not -- Kamala Khan
not -- Magneto 3
not -- Rocket & Groot
not -- She-Hulk
not -- Spider-Man 3
not -- Thor
not -- Bullseye 2
not -- Magneto 3
not -- Juggernaut
not -- Venom

Adding to this confusion is the Mismatch list -- character that have tile damages in a different order than their powers order.

Character Mismatch list
Tile Dam .. Power colors
-- - Beast (Modern)
-- - Black Widow (Grey Suit)
-- - Captain Marvel (Modern)
-- - Daken (both versions)
-- - Deadpool (It's Me, Deadpool)
-- - Doctor Doom (Classic)
-- - Hawkeye (Modern)
-- - Iron Man
-- - Loki (Dark Reign)
-- - Magneto (Classic)
-- - She-Hulk (modern)
-- - Spider-Man (Classic)
-- - Venom (Dark Avengers)

Due to the increasing importance of "strongest color", the solution should be done in four parts.
1. Some sort of indicator should be given for strongest color.
2. All front-line characters should have a strongest color that matches their strongest active power. A few weaker support characters might be allowed to "hide" their strongest active power.
3. Tile match damage orders should match power orders in all cases.
4. (new) Strongest Color should apply to the character currently at the front of the battle line and taking damage. This would be a buff for all characters that use strongest color attacks, since it would often give three options for the color to drain. But it would also add a nice strategic element to the game.

Tenaciousdecaf

I like this guy's idea.

viewtopic.php?f=7&t=30408

Malcrof

It appears the first power is their strongest colors. Venom, most likely in an earlier revision never implemented had a 3rd ability, (black, purple, green) like Bullseye, and the match damage was never adjusted.

Pylgrim

Bumping this with approval. However, it's an admittedly minor fix to be addressed when we still have a few more reviled issues such as 7-day long events.

yogi_

A comment about the broader intent of following on from Nonce's post (which is a generally positive and constructive one).

At a broader level, this is one of the things that this game doesn't do well - maintaining and improving the little things (more than the occasional character balance).

These changes aren't really going to make anything SO broadly noticeable for the average player (or increase sales, which is why they don't happen - there was a dev statement sometime ago saying as such) but it improves the underlying game and shows that the devs put time and care into the small details, rather than just "here, have another new character".

Mawtful

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

2. All front-line characters should have a strongest color that matches their strongest active power. A few weaker support characters might be allowed to "hide" their strongest active power.

I think I have to disagree with the first part of this statement. Players don't need their hand held any more than what is currently provided, especially those players who cannot comprehend that a given character's strongest colour doesn't match their strongest ability. That said, I'd still expect to see a lot of characters have those colours match. I can definitely think of a few sinister and cunning characters who would purposely be hiding their powerful attacks behind other people; CMags has two strong attacks and, thematically, I think it makes sense that he'd lead with Red but allow other people (Mystique, Quicksilver, ... Toad?) to be gathering Blue for him.

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

3. Tile match damage orders should match power orders in all cases.

I do agree with this.

Quebbster

aesthetocyst wrote:

So.....Nonce doesn't trust that this is all part of the devs meticulous approach to character balancing?

I believe the approach is to bounce a graviton particle beam off the main deflector dish...

Nonce Equitaur 2

I added the new "strongest color" power of the just announced Deadpool 4.

meekersX

Excellent post. This is something I noticed that bothered me as well. You explained the issue and possible corrections very clearly. I hope they find time to clean it up, especially as newer characters continue to use the Strongest Color mechanic.

nwman

Only fix needed is listing the strongest color damage tile as the top for all characters and not most.

I think your mismatch list are the ones that need to be fixed.

The rest is debateable like prof x. Blue is better than purple in teams / situations. I love 5 blue. It wins 75% and purple 25% at best.

Unknown

I would love some sort of UI indicator, and making the power order mirror the match damage seems to be a no-brainer.

Let's hope for Mobile UI 2.0 someday....

OnesOwnGrief

Imagine for a moment... if Hulkbuster's powers were swapped to Black/Blue/Red... Can you see what would happen right there?

babinro

This post over complicates things by shifting established colours around which just leads to mucking up a lot of established teams.

Keep it simple.

When activating a skill that has an effect based on strongest colour we get an 'okay/cancel' prompt that shows the strongest colour (like we do with deadpool's whales).