** Moonstone (Dark Avengers) **

d0nk3y

MarvelDestiny wrote:

TL;DR - The culture of coding simplification is ironically killing MPQ.

Or perhaps they've built the game on something that's been glitched since the beginning and has only gotten worse as different powers have been introduced? Maybe this isn't an issue with removing our sprinkles... maybe there's something wrong with the sprinkles we've been eating and in order to fix it, they have to take sprinkles off the menu for a while. It seems like there might be something broken with the countdown steal mechanic, or perhaps the whole countdown mechanic in general - remember the crashes that used to happen when using Fastball Special and countdown tile placement? Wasn't the solution to lock out CD tile generators from Fastball Special while they were fixing the issue? Looking at the rumors thread and the strange behavior of resetting CD tiles, it seems like CD tiles that do x for a given team break when their ownership is changed. Moonstone is ancient in terms of the game, so I'm wondering if it's her target that's broken, not the power itself.

Unknown

Control Shift - Black 9 AP
Moonstone shifts control of a random enemy Attack tile to her team, targeting the enemy.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Can also target Protect tiles. Level 3: 2 random tiles. Level 4: Can also target Strike tiles. Level 5: 3 random tiles.

So will the change make her playable in 2* rosters? I think yes. So far this is first char in that level being counter to special tiles and her skill not having 'boost' values like SheHulk/Elektra means all that power went to 'just' stealing more tiles. Perfect for 2* as it will scale based on usually much higher enemy level. She is like mini Loki against Muscles now. Using means her have much more chance being damage+targetted board destruction which is far more useful than lottery swap. Destroying one tile might seem really small, but if you're watching board carefully it can open loads of match-four and fives. Overall if I weren't heavily into 3*s already (or if she was boosted way more in PvEs so her damage would be useful) I would welcome her to my team with that skill set.

3/5/5 seems best build, at lower rank might actually be better if you're forced to counter CDs with it, is quite good nuke under right circumstances and needs at least 4 for that sweet tiles and 5th gives 50% boost to it.

Unknown

Seems like a good change to finally have her usable. I like the idea of Control Shift too, but it was like an achievement in itself getting it to work, and if you used it when facing goons, odds are you'd steal the wrong countdown like a Meteor Hammer and end up doing damage to your whole team.

The change makes sense. I'm hoping scaling in PVE will go down as more and more unsuspecting people wipe to her and her new ability.

Unknown

The most satisfying thing I've ever done in this game is force snipers to eat their own gun barrels using Moonstone's Control Shift. She was fun and interesting. Oh, well. This will ultimately probably end up having a small but not immeasurable positive impact on her use as a character.

This all makes me wonder why so much CD control has been removed from the game. Doc Oc, She-Hulk, Moonstone...is this all to make Vision more viable? Or is there something else working its way through the tubes that is even more countdown-y?

Malcrof

Moon 17 wrote:

The most satisfying thing I've ever done in this game is force snipers to eat their own gun barrels using Moonstone's Control Shift. She was fun and interesting. Oh, well. This will ultimately probably end up having a small but not immeasurable positive impact on her use as a character.

This all makes me wonder why so much CD control has been removed from the game. Doc Oc, She-Hulk, Moonstone...is this all to make Vision more viable? Or is there something else working its way through the tubes that is even more countdown-y?

With 4*'s like starlord, xf, and kingpin, all with countdown abilities, they may in fact have specialists in the works!

Started a moonstone yesterday.. oddly already have 5 covers in 1 day, at least she isn't rare.

Cabol

I like that people in 2* land have a new character that's viable to be used. Going to really suck facing her in PvE nodes now though ><

I applaud the devs for helping people not in the 3* meta and believe this is a very good change.

madsalad

Nivrax wrote:

Control Shift - Black 9 AP
Moonstone shifts control of a random enemy Attack tile to her team, targeting the enemy.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Can also target Protect tiles. Level 3: 2 random tiles. Level 4: Can also target Strike tiles. Level 5: 3 random tiles.

So will the change make her playable in 2* rosters? I think yes. So far this is first char in that level being counter to special tiles and her skill not having 'boost' values like SheHulk/Elektra means all that power went to 'just' stealing more tiles. Perfect for 2* as it will scale based on usually much higher enemy level. She is like mini Loki against Muscles now. Using means her have much more chance being damage+targetted board destruction which is far more useful than lottery swap. Destroying one tile might seem really small, but if you're watching board carefully it can open loads of match-four and fives. Overall if I weren't heavily into 3*s already (or if she was boosted way more in PvEs so her damage would be useful) I would welcome her to my team with that skill set.

3/5/5 seems best build, at lower rank might actually be better if you're forced to counter CDs with it, is quite good nuke under right circumstances and needs at least 4 for that sweet tiles and 5th gives 50% boost to it.

Just saw her update info on the Notifications section and was coming to comment on the exact thing. She will now definitely be playable in a 2* roster at 3 5 5 . That cost reduction on is fantastic. Time to get her leveled up and specked correctly.

CNash

Regarding Moonstone's new ability: If there are no special tiles that can be stolen, does Control Shift still stun the enemy?

darkmagearcanis

madsalad wrote:

Nivrax wrote:

Control Shift - Black 9 AP
Moonstone shifts control of a random enemy Attack tile to her team, targeting the enemy.
Level Upgrades

Level 2: Can also target Protect tiles. Level 3: 2 random tiles. Level 4: Can also target Strike tiles. Level 5: 3 random tiles.

So will the change make her playable in 2* rosters? I think yes. So far this is first char in that level being counter to special tiles and her skill not having 'boost' values like SheHulk/Elektra means all that power went to 'just' stealing more tiles. Perfect for 2* as it will scale based on usually much higher enemy level. She is like mini Loki against Muscles now. Using means her have much more chance being damage+targetted board destruction which is far more useful than lottery swap. Destroying one tile might seem really small, but if you're watching board carefully it can open loads of match-four and fives. Overall if I weren't heavily into 3*s already (or if she was boosted way more in PvEs so her damage would be useful) I would welcome her to my team with that skill set.

3/5/5 seems best build, at lower rank might actually be better if you're forced to counter CDs with it, is quite good nuke under right circumstances and needs at least 4 for that sweet tiles and 5th gives 50% boost to it.

Just saw her update info on the Notifications section and was coming to comment on the exact thing. She will now definitely be playable in a 2* roster at 3 5 5 . That cost reduction on is fantastic. Time to get her leveled up and specked correctly.

I agree, she will become very useful against those ninjas for sure.

Lidolas

papa07 wrote:

Considering the new character release rate is supposedly every 14 days and we just got 4!! new characters in 17 days, they still owe us another 29 days off after the Hulk event ends.

Bolded the important word in this post.

Buret0

udonomefoo wrote:

Wobby wrote:

Let's be fair. You have to bring a tile generator against high level Moonstone or Gravity Warp is a huge chunk of life taken off.

Since multiple people are calling me out on this, I will readily and humbly admit that I didn't think of the consequence of not bringing a special tile generator against Gravity Warp. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. Which makes her a more interesting build, but agree that making Dark Avengers better isn't helpful since we have to fight against them all the time. I cringe every time someone calls for a buff to Bullseye.

Then again, now that she can't touch the CD tiles, Scarlet Witch's Blue CD tile might just dance around the board a bit thanks to the AI's terrible use of Gravity Warp.

I'm not afraid of her Black/Purple combo... I'll just let Moonstone sit there building up Purple and Black AP while killing her teammates and denying red.

turul

I feel the same way as some of others here, loosing an unique ability is bad for the game.

btw, Some hint for devs to implement CD-tile stealing:

bad way:

CDtile.owner=Moonstone;

good way

pos=CDtile.position;
turns=CDtile.turns;
abilityToCast=CDtile.abilityToCast;
DestroyCD(pos);  // destroy = turn to basic
CreateCD(pos,turns,owner=Moonstone,abilityToCast);

Nonce Equitaur 2

Are there any people that have used Moonstone thousands of times, because she's their favorite character?

One thing Demiurge could do for unpopular characters that get changes. For the handful of people that really use those characters a lot, create a special Historical version of that character, and then give those rare players

1. the Historical version
2. the new version.

For popular characters, too bad. But Demiurge could use Historical versions themselves in their own events.

dr tinykittylove

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Are there any people that have used Moonstone thousands of times, because she's their favorite character?

One thing Demiurge could do for unpopular characters that get changes. For the handful of people that really use those characters a lot, create a special Historical version of that character, and then give those rare players

1. the Historical version
2. the new version.

For popular characters, too bad. But Demiurge could use Historical versions themselves in their own events.

But then I'd have to buy a new roster slot...

Unknown

dr tinykittylove wrote:

Nonce Equitaur 2 wrote:

Are there any people that have used Moonstone thousands of times, because she's their favorite character?

One thing Demiurge could do for unpopular characters that get changes. For the handful of people that really use those characters a lot, create a special Historical version of that character, and then give those rare players

1. the Historical version
2. the new version.

For popular characters, too bad. But Demiurge could use Historical versions themselves in their own events.

But then I'd have to buy a new roster slot...

Save that for Marvel Puzzle Quest: Xtreme Heroes and Villians Alpha Mark III Version

Khanwulf

Buret0 wrote:

... t I agree that a stun or a heal for Loki, (new) Moonstone, Daredevil, and She-Hulk might make sense.

...

While not mentioned, Double-Double Cross is kinda situational... you just need to activate it once if they have strike tiles, otherwise you are just gifting them one. And when the AI gets its hands on the ability, they usually just gift a strike tile to the other team. The only reason that ability needs to be adjusted is because of the useless AI.

Now I just wish that Gravity Warp did a bit more damage OR it wasn't completely random which CD or special tile was grabbed. At level five it is still far inferior to Idle Hands (in that it requires a special tile to swap and you can't choose which tile to swap unless there is only one on the board). Especially because most of the time you just want to use it for the damage and the targeted destruction of a single board tile (which I often use to make match fives).

Now, so long as there aren't any CD tiles on the board, you can use Control Shift to clear the path for Gravity Warp's damage.

Again, Moonstone is horribly used by the AI. The only reliable move that she has is her Red beam of death (which she usually gets off because there's better targets than Moonstone). If there are any special tiles on the board, the AI will often use Gravity Warp just to move them to a safer location.

I'm still not sure that, in the absence of AI adjustments, Moonstone's change makes her useless except against a very limited group of teams in PvP, and only when boosted to 150. In PvE, she can substitute in as a poor man's Loki for Purple and Black board management and tile conversion, but with a Red cannon (for where Loki's Green is useless against goons).

Maybe at five covers they should add back in a stun? Then they could make it (at covers one to four) steal X special tiles OR stun (if none present) and at five covers make it steal X tiles AND stun (like OBW blue's healing power).

All of these points are very valuable. I think the change makes Moonstone work better, overall, but the secondary effect needs to go back into Control Shift. I've used it essentially for a stun when I didn't have a black power, and was trading on her nearly purple damage. This is handy in transitioning teams. The change makes her a weaker, but more hurtful, Loki--this is fine but it underscores that Loki needs an alternate effect.

My suggestion would be to give Loki a stun of increasing duration.

She Hulk doesn't really need another effect, though I did like her minor heal. She was also my best 3* so I'm biased.

I really wish Moonstone's purple had more control over it.

--Khanwulf

PS. Double-double Cross does well if you have enough purple to use it twice. Then the resulting tiles are heavily in your favor.

Wonko33

MikeHock wrote:

Demiurge_Will wrote:

And it adds development and testing effort to every power that uses a Countdown tile in a new way, creating bugs and taking time away from other features we could be developing.

Who cares about Moonstone? I can't believe time is wasted on a useless 2* when there are so many other more important issues that need to be addressed. How about Demiurge focus on fixing the bug with OBW and Mystique, where critical tiles explode in mid-air? The thread below has been ignored for 7 months & the issue itself is about 1 year old?
http://www.d3go.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17505

How about you focus on showing the enemy AP AT ALL TIMES, for mobile users? It's only been asked of Demiurge since the game first started......

The reason why "you can't believe time is wasted" is because you don't even bother to read what you quoted- the change will save time in the long run to address all your points because they won't have to squash bugs caused by Control shift.

Heartburn

I think it is sad that they can't increase their team size to deal with multiple issues at once. Many people want to support this game, but you just can seem to make it better. It is like being stuck in the back seat of a car with a maniac driving into oncoming traffic. Balancing heroes shouldn't take more then a day to figure out and a week to implement. It takes a month to make coding change at my work and we are under the scrutiny of the FDA, why you haven't found the time to make me think it is not a priority, which deeply worries me. You are sitting on a gold mine and you are still haven't bothered to get more miners.
phew that turned out longer then expected. But glad i got it out.
Now back to getting ready go vacation.

Demiurge_Will

theHappyDance wrote:

Also, I really hope the MBW nerf rumors are false.

They're completely false.

I can't take the time to address every false rumor that comes around, but that one is just so goofy.

fmftint

Demiurge_Will wrote:

theHappyDance wrote:

Also, I really hope the MBW nerf rumors are false.

They're completely false.

I can't take the time to address every false rumor that comes around, but that one is just so goofy.

which leaves... OBW


confirm/deny lol

and btw it's not a rumor, this is from one of the game file updates this week