4* DDQ: Your Thing is on FI-YAAHHHH!

Vhailorx

scottee wrote:

show previous quotes

Dauthi wrote:

0/3/5 here. It is bad enough Thing's yellow is useless, I have no red. His red is pivotal in this since stunning is great 1v1. So it all came down to luck for me (and a bit of strategy). Got it on my 6th try or so.

I got lucky and managed to collect a decent amount of green while denying red, but this left the impending black. I just waited for him to use it and used my green in hope it removed most of the attack tiles. It did, and bought me enough time to get enough green to finish the fight.

While my thing is covered well, not having any red hurt really badly.

I had a slightly better 1/3/5 Thing, and the single red didn't help at all. Only one turn stun didn't really do anything. Definitely a high level green or red is required to win this, otherwise you don't have enough damage. Took me 8 tries by the way.

I am looking at both of you in envy. My 0/2/4 has the worst of both worlds. No stun, and 1/2 the damage from my green. Haven't gotten him lower than 1500 (when I was one green match away from victory, only to see a lucky cascade give the ai 10 black to burn me down).

vinnygecko

I got sooooo close my first try with 0/0/3 at 106. Got torch to 2300 hp before he hot a cascade and inferno and then I was done. 10 tries later, I've realized how lucky I was to get that close the first time. Hoping I'll have him better covered the next time he's up.

PorkBelly

FYI- only one person in my bracket has won this fight.

Seems fair.

fmftint

Alliance mate is reporting that at some point today Torch TU was changed to IF purple
SS in a minute

killerkoala

fmftint wrote:

Alliance mate is reporting that at some point today Torch TU was changed to IF purple
SS in a minute

yeah i just checked mine changed also to IF purple

TheRealJRad

TU was indeed changed. Logged in to see if I hadn't just gone craz(ier). My 2/0/1 isn't winning this regardless, but it hurt my heart when that IF TU match 5'd my face off.

If the TU was changed, they can *clearly* control it, so any comments over how sorry they are the AI gets a TU is just kitty. If you care, make it some TU with no in-game impact.

fmftint

I beat it first thing this morning, but it's pretty **** that they'd change something like this AND NOT SAY A GOD DAMN THING!

COMMUNICATION

Vhailorx

Team up did change at some point in the mid-to-late afternoon US East Coast time.

Finally got it done after about 15 tries spread out over the whole day.

Here were the conditions necessary for my 0/2/4 @147 Thing to prevail:

(1) Max boost match damage. so +50% r/y, +50% g/b, and +100% all.

(2) Torch cannot ever fire his red.

(3) IF torch does fire his black, Thing must have 12 green ap ready to go and hope that the board smash will destroy all or at least most of the attack tiles.

(4) The ai cannot ever get a significant green cascade, as flame jet will burn through thing very fast with enough ap.

(5) Thing must get plenty of red, green, and yellow matches. With all those boosts, each of those colors will do 400-500 damage per match.

The match I finally won met all of those conditions and was still very close. I only ever got enough ap to use green once, but i got luck and it cleared out all of the attack tiles. After that, the end of the match was a long tail of tactical matching. I just prioritized denying torch his colors and then went for damage matches when possible. It was a race of my match damage v. ai's board luck, and I won just as torch got enough black to cast inferno. I wouldn't have lasted two more turns. whew.

killerkoala

yeah even worst than mbw purple, is letting HT make extra black tiles. why couldn't they give him loki black instead a team up more useful.

Vhailorx

killerkoala wrote:

yeah even worst than mbw purple, is letting HT make extra black tiles. why couldn't they give him loki black instead a team up more useful.

no, the teamup change was a significant change in favor of players. AP theft is arguably the most powerful mechanic in the game. There's a reason that OBW is so powerful, and a reason that none of the 4* characters really have ap theft, and a reason that Loki and Hood were both left out of the massive healthshift that affected most 3*s in April 2015.

Yes, sometimes the if teamup creates black matches for torch, which is irritating. But that's so much better than losing red, green, and black ap to fuel torch. Red in particular is the most important color to deny for underleveled things, so switching to a teamup that will almost never provide red ap is great for players. And Thing has a boardsmash power that can help clean up the attack tiles from inferno too (with some luck).

fmftint

Vhailorx wrote:

no, the teamup change was a significant change in favor of players. AP theft is arguably the most powerful mechanic in the game. There's a reason that OBW is so powerful, and a reason that none of the 4* characters really have ap theft, and a reason that Loki and Hood were both left out of the massive healthshift that affected most 3*s in April 2015.

Yes, sometimes the if teamup creates black matches for torch, which is irritating. But that's so much better than losing red, green, and black ap to fuel torch. Red in particular is the most important color to deny for underleveled things, so switching to a teamup that will almost never provide red ap is great for players. And Thing has a boardsmash power that can help clean up the attack tiles from inferno too (with some luck).

Plus it's a 5 ap TU so it will get burned faster making for a less overall impact on the match

Dauthi

Vhailorx wrote:

show previous quotes

killerkoala wrote:

yeah even worst than mbw purple, is letting HT make extra black tiles. why couldn't they give him loki black instead a team up more useful.

no, the teamup change was a significant change in favor of players. AP theft is arguably the most powerful mechanic in the game. There's a reason that OBW is so powerful, and a reason that none of the 4* characters really have ap theft, and a reason that Loki and Hood were both left out of the massive healthshift that affected most 3*s in April 2015.

Yes, sometimes the if teamup creates black matches for torch, which is irritating. But that's so much better than losing red, green, and black ap to fuel torch. Red in particular is the most important color to deny for underleveled things, so switching to a teamup that will almost never provide red ap is great for players. And Thing has a boardsmash power that can help clean up the attack tiles from inferno too (with some luck).

Yep, AP drain is the strongest ability by far. AP is the source of damage in the game, stealing it reduces one sides and increases the others. I believe any ability that does this should cost so much more, because it makes/breaks games.

scottee wrote:

show previous quotes

Dauthi wrote:

0/3/5 here. It is bad enough Thing's yellow is useless, I have no red. His red is pivotal in this since stunning is great 1v1. So it all came down to luck for me (and a bit of strategy). Got it on my 6th try or so.

I got lucky and managed to collect a decent amount of green while denying red, but this left the impending black. I just waited for him to use it and used my green in hope it removed most of the attack tiles. It did, and bought me enough time to get enough green to finish the fight.

While my thing is covered well, not having any red hurt really badly.

I had a slightly better 1/3/5 Thing, and the single red didn't help at all. Only one turn stun didn't really do anything. Definitely a high level green or red is required to win this, otherwise you don't have enough damage. Took me 8 tries by the way.

It's just frusterating in when I am denying red but can't use it, and a few games when I had a few red cascades. I would get him low but couldn't finish it and that red would have made the difference.

Moon Roach

Interesting with the change of team-up. My 0/1/5 had given up, maybe I'll try again before it disappears in about 3 hours.

Pylgrim

17 tries with my level 135 1/1/4 Thing. No dice. Note that it is level 135 because it cannot go up any higher. I have earned all the Thing cover's awarded by the game so far, except two in the release event (the top 10 and alliance top 100 ones) and however few or many have been awarded to top 1-2 in events. So this is as high as the game has allowed me to go and now, it's punishing me for it.

This is by far the most unfair and anti-player of these events so far. 4 cheap, strong-to-game-ending abilities vs 2 expensive and weak ones. The writing was on the wall. The change from BW Team Up to IF is a mere notch down in difficulty, trading a 10 AP ability that usually ended the game the turn after, for a 5 AP ability that usually ends the game 3 turns after (via Inferno damage). I'd say that a 60% of the times I lost before I gathered more than 9 Green or Red AP to try to counteract whatever was coming.

JVReal

They did a stealth change to the TU and told NOBODY?

That's messed up. How many people gave up, and never went back to the fight because they wrote it off as a loss and moved on to spending their Health Packs on Juggs PVE, or BOP, or Gauntlet?

How many would have gone back and gone after the 4*DDQ if they had been notified of the changed TU?

Personally, my 1/0/1 Thing wasn't going to win regardless of the TU, but I know plenty who gave up because that TU was doing them in every time. It was nice that they changed it... But really bad that they changed it and TOLD NOBODY.

Hendross

**** I rage quit with level 131 Thing, had him under 1k twice in 20 attempts THEN you change the TU???? You can't change the rules mid-event, else I would have tried again. This is lame.

The Viceroy Returns

That is some ****.
My Level 130 2 1 3 Thing could probably have won.
But like everyone else I didn't even bother after my first attempt because of the overpowered Team Up they gave him.

They have NEVER done this before so there was no precedent to expect they would.
AND... Even if they could do it tech-wise (which we didn't know they could swap out a TU same day in the live game), they've shown no ability to balance on the fly and tweak things as they happen in the benefit of the players.

This one DEFINITELY needs some explanation by a dev.

They've honestly been insanely quiet since Anniversary 2. Outside of the "this month in MPQ" thread that really only lists the event schedule, I've seen no posts by any dev that amounts to any sort of information about anything that's been changing.
They didn't even mention the Maggia Muscle & Don goon updates with the last patch at all, a rather significant change, and haven't commented at all when people found it out. You'd think patch notes would actually tell useful information. I could give a rat's **** if it's given as flavor text or straight up information, but real patch notes at least mention balance changes, whether they nerf something or not.

Not listing these makes it feel like the devs are trying to pull one over on us. Vets already feel like communication is incompetent at best (responses to AI having TU's and you not for 4 DDQ fights), and condescending at worst ("you're supposed to lose" type responses).
I suppose there is the phrase "don't confuse ill intent with incompetence/indifference," but it's hard to know which is which anymore.

Malcrof

For those complaining about the change in team up.. within probable minutes of it being changed, it was posted on the forums by a player, and on Line by players... why would it make any difference if a dev posted the change or a player did.. if you were on the forum, you would have read it either way... if a dev had posted it, it most likely would have been in this thread.. where players had already posted it...

The OBW team up was only 2 covers, same as the IF one, so it didn't steal black.. the IF one i think would have been much worse.. giving black AP to Torch, pass...

JVReal

Malcrof wrote:

For those complaining about the change in team up.. within probable minutes of it being changed, it was posted on the forums by a player, and on Line by players... why would it make any difference if a dev posted the change or a player did.. if you were on the forum, you would have read it either way... if a dev had posted it, it most likely would have been in this thread.. where players had already posted it...

The OBW team up was only 2 covers, same as the IF one, so it didn't steal black.. the IF one i think would have been much worse.. giving black AP to Torch, pass...

The difference is that a Dev posting would have been up top, started by a Dev, hopefully not in the thread started by players... or in an announcement. I would have read that. No need to read the Thing thread when I said my piece about my experience and moved on. I only read this thread this morning, because it's my morning ritual.

I read all Dev announcements when they are visibly in their own thread.

It was just a very stealth move, and a very important move, and not to tell people was just a bit lazy of them. It didn't impact me personally, but I don't want it to be the precedence that is used when it happens again in an event that does impact me.

Nobody in my alliance made mention of it in Line. They either had beat it already, or had given up by then.

IF TU that converts 4 random tiles to black does not guarantee AI any AP... AP theft takes away your AP and gives it to the AI directly harming you and directly benefiting an already advantaged AI. It was a significant change to the node.

Malcrof

JVReal wrote:

The difference is that a Dev posting would have been up top, started by a Dev, hopefully not in the thread started by players... or in an announcement. I would have read that. No need to read the Thing thread when I said my piece about my experience and moved on. I only read this thread this morning, because it's my morning ritual.

I read all Dev announcements when they are visibly in their own thread.

It was just a very stealth move, and a very important move, and not to tell people was just a bit lazy of them. It didn't impact me personally, but I don't want it to be the precedence that is used when it happens again in an event that does impact me.

Nobody in my alliance made mention of it in Line. They either had beat it already, or had given up by then.

IF TU that converts 4 random tiles to black does not guarantee AI any AP... AP theft takes away your AP and gives it to the AI directly harming you and directly benefiting an already advantaged AI. It was a significant change to the node.

If every dev post answering a question or commenting on something, was it's very own thread, this place would be a mess.... as for Line.. it was in multiple rooms there within seconds of it going live...

But honestly, the TU was not the difference maker.. with as long as it took me to beat it.. (22 tries), the time i won, was the time he never got to use the TU.. so it never came into play.