**** Wolverine (X-Force) ****

Stax the Foyer

Pylgrim wrote:

Look. Most characters have a comparatively 'bad" ability. One that you automatically know to put only 3 covers in. X-Force's is now green. That might feel weird after previously being his best, but you just adapt. Black is his best now (and one of the best abilities in the game) and Yellow is second best. Forget about green, there are like 10 better green skills that now get their time to shine.

They've been on a roll lately (Rags aside) at making characters with multiple viable specs. That there's such a strong consensus in favor of 3/5/5 makes it a bit of an outlier as far as their recent development goes.

Inarius

with this new update I'll have to go with 3/5/5, even tho I don't have all the covers for him just how much dmg does a fully leveled does?

healing 9k hp or dealing 3.6k if the tile is matched seems like a good choice to go with, he'll basically be mr super tank

Dauthi

I am pretty pleased with XForce. I wouldn't even say his green is bad, it is mediocre. The problem is everyone is comparing it to his previous green which was at least top tier, probably OP. His black hits like a truck now, and his yellow is so much better.

He is definitely in line with 4* Thor now, who I was upset with initially but realize now she can still rockslide a battle. Thanks to XForce's nerf, it's like she got an indirect buff too.

poomermon

I'm not sure if 3/5/5 is an absolutely best build. Sure green damage sucks compared to what it was before but it is still an okay green board shaker. Way better than Hulks green and comparable to magnetos red. Maybe not the best but I would still use X-Force if I needed a char that uses green/black especially if he gets sometimes boosted (like as a weekly boosted char if that ever becomes a thing). Yellow is pretty much the same as 3 covers (good for healing) and becomes decent damage skill at 5 covers but it is still super unreliable as you can't always match it. Green at 3 covers is absolutely abysmal and in no way usable. I think there are better green and yellow abilities so it comes down to if you want to pair him with a green or yellow user.

Unknown

can someone who played with a fully maxed post-nerf XF comment on this:

what build do u use and what are the numbers?

is 553 (my current build) still dealing dmg?
whats the dmg if u have 355 and destroy the yellow cd-tile?

heads up, dear brothers, i was shocked too, to see that my 166 xf did a measly 1,4k with his green (it was around 4k pre-nerf)

Unknown

I just ran my lvl 270 553 XForce to 400 points in Lethal Intent.

His deals 1800-2000 damage and the usual potential cascades. I have gotten some nice cascades from it, but I've also had some complete misses. A board-shaker can be a nice thing to have, I guess, but that's really what it is now; a standard board-shaker. I give it a 5/10 ranking.

His deals a kittyload of damage. if you can wait a bit, dealing 10k damage for 11AP is definitely a possibility. Possibly still the best black ability in the game. 9/10

At only 3 covers, is not that great, though I find myself matching my own tile now more often than I was before. At 3 covers, I give it a 5/10.

I will respec to 5 yellow if I ever get the covers.

All things said, he is definitely weaker than he was before, but the claims that he is now useless are definitely exagerrated.

Unknown

Is this thread a joke or something ?

Am I daydreaming ?

He's quite different, but overall, if you play him with some thinking, he can still be very efficient.

So, I'd say :

Pre-nerf : you play XForce without brains, you always win
Post-nerf : you play XForce with brains, you have great chances to win

Unknown

Dauthi wrote:

I am pretty pleased with XForce. I wouldn't even say his green is bad, it is mediocre. The problem is everyone is comparing it to his previous green which was at least top tier, probably OP. His black hits like a truck now, and his yellow is so much better.

This. I'm sad seeing low numbers on green, but it's more matter of perspective, it's not longer power you use to nuke, it's mainly a boardshake. Sort like Juggs one, but for 2 AP you get extra 3k damage. And no, just because it compares to 1* doesn't mean it's bad, stuff like board manipulation and AP steal/generation are always as good as damaging powers they enable/disable.

You still want to race black, but you need to make sure you have someone covering on red/blue/purple to make use of AP from cascade.

Unknown

DeadPool does more damage on his red and its cheaper and hes a 3*...

Unknown

WolfmanX25 wrote:

All things said, he is definitely weaker than he was before, but the claims that he is now useless are definitely exagerrated.

Hes not useless. The issue is that he no longer has the feel of a four star character. Ive always had mine at 3 5 5 but his green was nerfed so badly. For 8 green ap i do 870 damage at lvl 270. There are two star characters who do wayyy more damage for either the same or slightly more ap, or if not more damage they have effects. Even two star wolverine does 575 damage for 6 ap and creates strike tiles. Him at level 94 compares to a lvl 270 in damage and effectiveness. Thats insane. If you keep him away from black he cant do damage. Hes a one trick pony. Oh right. His yellow. Which can be destroyed or placed in a spot where i cant match it. Its healing power is still amazing. Im not saying he wasnt all powerful before or that hes still not useful and but the way i have to play him now is so different than before. They changed him in all the wrong ways. Now its like build enough to do black once. Then cant do black again because the strongest tile isnt on the field and i didnt even earn ap. for them. Then try and match the yellow i placed. Cuz that consistently does more damage than green and depending on tiles more than black. I could rant about this for hours. They should have decreased his black damage but kept the effects. Increased yellow damage( maybe not the extent that they did) and a minor decrease in green. Dont flip a characters abilities on its head and give it to players with a smile on your face.

Unknown

Pylgrim wrote:

Have you actually used it? Yes it lost the secondary traits, but if you think 7-10k damage for 11 AP plus board shake is not ridiculous, I don't know what to tell you.

The 7-10k you quote is conditional, its more like 6.5k. This can be consistently achieved by a few 3*, but the difference is that those 3* can rack up similar damage because there is no condition set on the power, 6.5k wont take out many covers post health boost so you're sitting with a full black bar with no way of using it as the strong tile is still the same and the board is empty.

And yes ive used it, as I said on the post, I lost a match as he took all of the useful tiles I had on the board and by the time I filled it again to do any damage I was done.

Phaserhawk

All they need to do is drop the AP cost of X-Force to 7 and he's perfect. As for everyone switching to 3/5/5, yes that does more theoretical damage but you really gut green, from doing 2K to like 700

Yes yellow becomes dangerous but if the AI matches you gave them a bigger cascade. I think 4/5/4 might hit the sweet spot with him, but here's one reason I think the damage got hit on green.

DAMAGE BOOSTS!!!!

For 100 ISO you can play 5x 10% G/B damage boost so now you do 3K and SS does almost 10K, I have a feeling this came into play.

simonsez

Phaserhawk wrote:

For 100 ISO you can play 5x 10% G/B damage boost so now you do 3K and SS does almost 10K, I have a feeling this came into play.

This is the second time you've said this, so now I'm forced to assume you're serious. Since when do devs scale ability damage under the assumption someone will be max boosting? I can answer. Never. So why on earth would they start now, and why for THIS ability?

Never mind the fact that the power boosts apply to MATCH DAMAGE and not ability damage.

So can we please go back to the conventional wisdom that this nerf was yet another overreach, and stop trying to contrive reasons why it might not actually suck?

Omega Blacc

I don't think X-Force needs to be replaced. Just adjust how you use him. The matches will certainly be slower now, but Surgical Strike is a one-shot death for most of MPQ's toons. Just fire it off at the right time.

This may be a common team, but I just used XF/ Punisher / Hood. Hood obviously did his thing, but I downed Lazy Thor with a Surgical Strike to the face followed by Retribution to drop him from full health to zero. I have SS at 5 covers, but that combination didn't require a board full of red tiles to work.

I don't see many people surviving that barrage. Add in the fact that you can use Judgement or X-Force as situational green attacks as well as Healing or Twin Pistols. Just no purple coverage...but that can negated by Hood anyway.

The only maxed guy in this trio is Hood, but I like the possibilities.

Phaserhawk

simonsez wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

For 100 ISO you can play 5x 10% G/B damage boost so now you do 3K and SS does almost 10K, I have a feeling this came into play.

This is the second time you've said this, so now I'm forced to assume you're serious. Since when do devs scale ability damage under the assumption someone will be max boosting? I can answer. Never. So why on earth would they start now, and why for THIS ability?

Never mind the fact that the power boosts apply to MATCH DAMAGE and not ability damage.

So can we please go back to the conventional wisdom that this nerf was yet another overreach, and stop trying to contrive reasons why it might not actually suck?

I think it's because it's the only way I can get this to make sense in my head. SS stinks it doesn't do anything to AP, they could have made it similar to Kingpin and just had it destroy 5 or 8 or whatever as well as the damage. X-Force makes no sense to decrease the damage that much unless they were afraid of boosting because here's where I have a problem

Cyclops
10 AP does 4283 dmg and destroys a row thus causing cascades, not to mention a skill that feeds his red similar to ss feeding x-force and a massive black dmg skill. Essentially Cyclops is X-Force. They have similar red/green's they have similar dmg blacks, the difference is their yellow. X-Force's was for some dmg but mainly heal, Cyclops is for acceleration of his primary which SS did for X-Force. So tell me why a 3* is a better dmg dealer than a 4* it just doesn't make sense unless they were trying to account for something else.

elvy75

The problem with xforce is that his powers in theory can work well, but:
1. 5 green: around 2k damage + board shake that can generate AP - in practice does less damage and if you match one color you are extremely lucky
2. 5 black: potential of 7-10k - in practice if it is the color you need for your other abilities you deprived yourself from it, and if you have just few strongest color on board (it happens, i had yesterday several times just 2-4 red on board) you fire a blank
3. 5 yellow: you get to 'choose' between nearly full health or 3.6k damage - in practice you dont have a choice, as your tile is placed for you

So to sum it up in theory you have potential of huge damage or nothing. Given that the strongest color is always featured char color you are depriving yourself AP that you just removed from board as well, meaning that you surgically removed your own potential to attack, while AI still has all AP needed to retaliate, which means his ability description is false - it doesnt cripple enemy ability to retaliate, but cripples you as you are unable to make a move. Now i dont say bring back AP steel, that was too powerful, but something has to be done, as xforce as its now is not anymore the character that you can rely on.

My idea of fixing him:
1. Increase damage to green to 2k+tiles or just make it something that each tile costs 200, which would get 3k damage total
2. return AP drain at lvl 5 and diminish damage/tile to average 5-6k
3. remove OR word, let him heal and deal the damage, not one or the other. Or if you dont want that give the option to place CD tile, so players can choose weather they want to heal or deal damage.

mjh

GrumpySmurf1002 wrote:

Best replacement for XForce is XForce. I'll be more apt to rotate him out now, but don't see why I'll stop using him.

This.

He will remain top tier. He didn't get nerfed into oblivion (but almost). has shown how powerful he is now, that seemed to be the new high level pvp team.

I also got pwn3d by

funny enough, not seeing at all, I thought I would, his abilities are powerful

Dauthi

Phaserhawk wrote:

Cyclops
10 AP does 4283 dmg and destroys a row thus causing cascades, not to mention a skill that feeds his red similar to ss feeding x-force and a massive black dmg skill. Essentially Cyclops is X-Force. They have similar red/green's they have similar dmg blacks, the difference is their yellow. X-Force's was for some dmg but mainly heal, Cyclops is for acceleration of his primary which SS did for X-Force. So tell me why a 3* is a better dmg dealer than a 4* it just doesn't make sense unless they were trying to account for something else.

I think a lot of people are underestimating board shake-up, and XForce is one of the best in the game at this. There is a reason why we all hold our breath when Unstoppable Force gets thrown at us, and that is AP gain. We have seen the nerf towards anything that delivers AP gain, and justly so as winning revolves around ability execution which requires AP. Every time you shake up the board you have a chance at cascades = AP. It also removes special tiles from the board, and can save you in those specific scenarios.

Cyclops does more damage, but destroying 1 row has an extremely lower chance of cascading then XForce, and it costs more too. This isn't to say it is a bad ability, it does a ton of damage with a small chance to cascade, but it shouldn't be compared to raw board shake-up like XForce.

Cyclops black does a ton of damage, yes. It also stuns himself too. But the biggest catch is the bonus damage requires red on the board, which is more likely thanks to his yellow, but it is still a prerequisite that can mess up your game/planning. SS is 11 AP for a ton of damage, and if planned right can take out a color that your opponent needs (this has helped me many times when character X needs 3 more ap to do X ability). It also has crazier shakeup than XForce thanks to removing an entire color from the board. Less colors = higher % to cascade. I also find this skill invaluable when fighting henchmen in PVE, as it destroys the colors they place their countdown tiles on. Nifty.

I think the problem is quantifying board shake-up, and like others have said he is now the king of it. A cascade can end the game, so I think there should be emphasis placed on board shakeup when considering its value.

Unknown

X Force is one of the best special tile remover and there's an obvious direction of moving the best moves to depend on special tiles (just look at all the 4*s). X Force usually opens up at least 1/3 if not more of the board because if there are 5 match 3s on the board, you'd be able to access 15 matchable + 15 tiles destroyed + ~7 tile cascaded (based on simulations) + ~15 matchable in the new board rearranged by X Force. Yes some of that is going to overlap but the point is that X Force lets you reach special tiles that you'd otherwise have a very hard time reaching, and with certain special tiles being pretty game deciding on their own (e.g. Invisibility, Escape Plan, Battle Plan, anything offensive CD from Star-Lord) this is important. Yes Captain America is still better, but Captain America pretty much is a special tile remover specialist so he better be very good at that. Falcon is great against CDs too but his offense requires certain characters, and he can't remove Invisibility (or the new drop tiles hinted in the upcoming PvE stuff). There are a lot of time I'm sitting here looking at a Sniper Rifle or something nasty that I can't reach via matching at all and X Force solves the problem. No X Force isn't going to be very useful against someone like Thor (3*) who uses no special tiles whatsoever but I'm pretty sure it's a matter of time before they migrated all the best moves, at least in terms of maximum potential, to stuff that depends on certain conditions simply because otherwise there would be no reason to ever risk using special tiles.

Now that Surgical Strike does a lot more damage, he's also pretty good for a Iron Fist -> Surgical Strike and try to just blitz the one villian + 2 goon combo, which is typically the hardest PvE nodes in the game.

Unknown

Phaserhawk wrote:

simonsez wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

For 100 ISO you can play 5x 10% G/B damage boost so now you do 3K and SS does almost 10K, I have a feeling this came into play.

This is the second time you've said this, so now I'm forced to assume you're serious. Since when do devs scale ability damage under the assumption someone will be max boosting? I can answer. Never. So why on earth would they start now, and why for THIS ability?

Never mind the fact that the power boosts apply to MATCH DAMAGE and not ability damage.

So can we please go back to the conventional wisdom that this nerf was yet another overreach, and stop trying to contrive reasons why it might not actually suck?

I think it's because it's the only way I can get this to make sense in my head. SS stinks it doesn't do anything to AP, they could have made it similar to Kingpin and just had it destroy 5 or 8 or whatever as well as the damage. X-Force makes no sense to decrease the damage that much unless they were afraid of boosting because here's where I have a problem

Cyclops
10 AP does 4283 dmg and destroys a row thus causing cascades, not to mention a skill that feeds his red similar to ss feeding x-force and a massive black dmg skill. Essentially Cyclops is X-Force. They have similar red/green's they have similar dmg blacks, the difference is their yellow. X-Force's was for some dmg but mainly heal, Cyclops is for acceleration of his primary which SS did for X-Force. So tell me why a 3* is a better dmg dealer than a 4* it just doesn't make sense unless they were trying to account for something else.

It's amusing to me that you'd think you can just say some nonsense and we'll just ignore the fact that you clearly had no idea what boosts do