After championing X-Force and other still need work

Phaserhawk

So it's been about a month since championing and after looking at some rosters and able to see fully maxed level 370 characters, indeed many of the characters balance out later. One example is Carnage who gets pretty good at later levels. But once again, something needs to be fixed on X-Force. His green is just abysmal when you look at other's at the same cost, or feature.

Cyclops blue
X-23 green


X-Force's green needs a damage boost, period. About 10% minimum. In addition, he needs some health back and finally, I've been thinking about what his black was and is, and it just feels off. I propose a happy medium.

Add in a destroys 3-6 AP on his black so the skill at least matches. Steal was OP but losing the ability to drop some of their AP wasn't a smart idea IMO.

4* Thor--Still needs one more charged tile on blue and yellow back to original.

There are others, but the original dynamic duo really does need to be brought back to close to their original incarnation because as we can see, they were just ahead of their time, and were never overpowered.

STOPTHIS

The devs seem to be making good on their word concerning quality of life changes. It wouldn't surprise me if these reworks/buffs that are slowly being rolled out continued past the 3* level into the 4* level as many of the lower tier 4* are from earlier in the tier's creation.

Sm0keyJ0e

I dunno, they are releasing NEW four stars that are way worse than any that need work, like Totally Awful Hulk. How anyone thought he was a good idea is beyond me.

tanis3303

Yes, but now we have Spider Gwen!! She's a totally unique character, with web tile generation, stuns and extra damage dependent on the number of web tiles around. Nothing like that exists in the game anywher.....oh. wait.....

Vhailorx

XFW was effectively double-nerfed in April. Not only did his abilities take a serious downgrade, but he was also excluded from the health shift that happened at the same time (presumably because he was so powerful at the time that the devs didn't think he needed any extra health).

So everyone else got stronger, AND he got weaker (a lot weaker).

Green needs either more damage, more boardshake, or a lower casting cost (at 6ap, it would be decent; on par with Psylocke's black).

Black needs to get back its ap destruction powers OR its ap collection powers (but not both!)

Yellow is meh as is in light of other 4* abilities, but should probably do a bit more damage, or be a place-able countdown.

puppychow

Vhailorx wrote:

Yellow is meh as is in light of other 4* abilities, but should probably do a bit more damage, or be a place-able countdown.

If the player can choose, either a specific yellow tile or any color non-special tile, to place, I think it would make xf's yellow ability more attractive. Enough so that the ideal spec would then be 355. One reason I go 553 is because his yel rarely goes off successfully, and it becomes a waste of ap to use that ability.

Vhailorx

puppychow wrote:

Vhailorx wrote:

Yellow is meh as is in light of other 4* abilities, but should probably do a bit more damage, or be a place-able countdown.

If the player can choose, either a specific yellow tile or any color non-special tile, to place, I think it would make xf's yellow ability more attractive. Enough so that the ideal spec would then be 355. One reason I go 553 is because his yel rarely goes off successfully, and it becomes a waste of ap to use that ability.

I disagree. I stuck with 5/5/3 after the nerf for a long time because I was comfortable with it and and I didn't want to risk being stuck with 3/5/5 if it sucked.

but now that I have xpool cover-maxed, I went ahead and championed XFW for that purple-->black combo, and a side benefit is I was able to switch builds to try out 3/5/5. It's significantly better IMO. I only ever used green as a cheap boardshake now anyways, so the difference between 3 and 5 covers is minimal (6 extra tiles destroyed seems big, but since the placement is random anyway it doesn't make much difference. And the 700 odd damage is a pittance). But the change from 3 to 5 yellow covers is huge. the damage for matching away the countdown becomes significant (about 3600), so it can be used offensively in a pinch. And when i do get that countdown to resolve, it means max health. It's still a meh power overall because 9 ap for a 3-turn countdown/trap is not in line with, for example, Carnage's yellow that does 6+k and makes 100 in protect tiles all instantaneously for the exact same cost.

Mawtful

Here's what I've suggested every other time this topic has come up:

Give his green extra damage per special tile destroyed - enemy specials for ranks 1-4 and include friendly specials at Rank 5.

Vhailorx

Mawtful wrote:

Here's what I've suggested every other time this topic has come up:

Give his green extra damage per special tile destroyed - enemy specials for ranks 1-4 and include friendly specials at Rank 5.

I don't like that mechanic on Carnage or 4* venom, so I would rather not port it over to xfw. I think the problem with this power is that it doesn't know if it is a cheap(ish) board shake power with a bit of damage, or a cheap(ish) damage power with a bit of boardshake. Just pick one. Give it lots of boardshake at 6ap and leave the damage as is. Or give it targeted board control at 8ap. Or let it do a noticeable amount of damage so it's ~3k for 8ap with the 9 tile 'X'.

morph3us

What about letting him drop some Strike tiles after the board shake component of XF? He's the only version of Wolverine in game who doesn't generate Strikes.

atomzed

Vhailorx wrote:

I disagree. I stuck with 5/5/3 after the nerf for a long time because I was comfortable with it and and I didn't want to risk being stuck with 3/5/5 if it sucked.

but now that I have xpool cover-maxed, I went ahead and championed XFW for that purple-->black combo, and a side benefit is I was able to switch builds to try out 3/5/5. It's significantly better IMO. I only ever used green as a cheap boardshake now anyways, so the difference between 3 and 5 covers is minimal (6 extra tiles destroyed seems big, but since the placement is random anyway it doesn't make much difference. And the 700 odd damage is a pittance). But the change from 3 to 5 yellow covers is huge. the damage for matching away the countdown becomes significant (about 3600), so it can be used offensively in a pinch. And when i do get that countdown to resolve, it means max health. It's still a meh power overall because 9 ap for a 3-turn countdown/trap is not in line with, for example, Carnage's yellow that does 6+k and makes 100 in protect tiles all instantaneously for the exact same cost.

Thanks for the sharing vhailorx! After seeing your logic it makes a lot of sense to change it to 5 yellow.

Especially since I only use xfw with xdp. With 3 yellow I often have difficulty getting him to heal sufficiently. your explanation sway me towards 5 yellow now!

Elric_VIII

I'd love if they gave his a function similar to Human Torch's . Have it heal him every turn after it is down, consuming yellow AP.

El Satanno

I ran X-Force 3/5/5 even before championing and like him much better that way. Since then, I go 5/5/3 only because I don't always need him ready to heal. That being said, I would still say his yellow is more valuable at 5 than green is.

If we're talking about yet another rebuild, there's an idea I've had for a while now that I'm quite fond of. I won't post numbers, because I'm not a numbers guy. Let's just assume it's set to a value that puts him in the dangerous-to-ignore category of character at the least.

• Yellow (passive)
• Creates an X-turn countdown tile if one doesn't already exist
• When the countdown resolves, heal Wolverine for X. (Proper healing, not this burst flim-flam.)
• If the countdown is matched or destroyed, deal X damage to opponent.

Easy peasy, feels Wolverine-y, makes him a royal pain in the ****. Like he ought to be.

Also, his black really should have some of the juice it used to. I like the idea of AP drain, at least. Generation is a bit much, although maybe his green oughta generate AP instead? I dunno. It's the yellow that I think about more often.

Vhailorx

El Satanno wrote:

I ran X-Force 3/5/5 even before championing and like him much better that way. Since then, I go 5/5/3 only because I don't always need him ready to heal. That being said, I would still say his yellow is more valuable at 5 than green is.

If we're talking about yet another rebuild, there's an idea I've had for a while now that I'm quite fond of. I won't post numbers, because I'm not a numbers guy. Let's just assume it's set to a value that puts him in the dangerous-to-ignore category of character at the least.

• Yellow (passive)
• Creates an X-turn countdown tile if one doesn't already exist
• When the countdown resolves, heal Wolverine for X. (Proper healing, not this burst flim-flam.)
• If the countdown is matched or destroyed, deal X damage to opponent.

Easy peasy, feels Wolverine-y, makes him a royal pain in the ****. Like he ought to be.

Also, his black really should have some of the juice it used to. I like the idea of AP drain, at least. Generation is a bit much, although maybe his green oughta generate AP instead? I dunno. It's the yellow that I think about more often.

Love it! Instantly becomes a functional true heal power that feels very different from the other wolverines in the game, but is not gamebreaking. Trick would be figuring out how much healing and damage it would actually do. I would say about 40% health or so with the 3 turn countdowns. That means he will be back to fill in around 10 turns, which is useful, but also that he won't instantly top off if you can't get a cd. And maybe a bit less damage than it currently does, so 1.5-2k or so.

The numbers would need some tweaking, but will put few back in the top tier of 4*s without being overpowered at all.

And because of switch, we know this would be a pretty easy change to implement. The mechanism already exists. Demiruge: please give this a shot!

Polares

I still don't understand WHY they changed xforce green, the reason has eluded me to this day. Black was OP, we all agreed on that, but green?!?!?! And yeah, not changing his life pool after the nerf was a low blow, totally undeserved.

Now I have also championed him and I usually run him 4/5/4 I think it has a good balance of both green and yellow, so at least green does a good board shake, but I don't see any reason at all why it should not be restored exactly as it was, 2.5-3k damage and board shake.

And yes, both him and 4hor doesn't scale that much, even IMHB doesn't scale that much when championed (they scale so much better when buffed, but they all do), this should probably be checked, why some 4s like Carnage, iceman or x-23, scale so well and other so badly. 4hor needs at least a tile or two more, seven would be perfect, six the bare minimum.

Phaserhawk

Polares wrote:

I still don't understand WHY they changed xforce green, the reason has eluded me to this day. Black was OP, we all agreed on that, but green?!?!?! And yeah, not changing his life pool after the nerf was a low blow, totally undeserved.

Now I have also championed him and I usually run him 4/5/4 I think it has a good balance of both green and yellow, so at least green does a good board shake, but I don't see any reason at all why it should not be restored exactly as it was, 2.5-3k damage and board shake.

And yes, both him and 4hor doesn't scale that much, even IMHB doesn't scale that much when championed (they scale so much better when buffed, but they all do), this should probably be checked, why some 4s like Carnage, iceman or x-23, scale so well and other so badly. 4hor needs at least a tile or two more, seven would be perfect, six the bare minimum.

No IMHB and 4hor do not scale well dmg wise, but they do have ridiculous health pools. As others have mentioned, either return X-Force to pre-nerf levels but leave yellow, but don't allow black to steal AP. Again here is what I would do with black.

Surgical Strike - Cost: 11 AP
Wolverine attacks with ruthless precision, crippling his enemy’s ability to retaliate. Destroys every tile in the enemy team’s strongest color, and destroys 3 AP of their strongest color. dealing 55 damage per tile. Does not generate AP.
Level 2. Deals 96 damage per tile. Destroy 3 AP
Level 3. Deals 138 damage per tile. Destroy 4 AP
Level 4. Deals 225 damage per tile. Destroy 4 AP
Level 5. Deals 394 damage per tile. Destroy 5 AP
Max Level: Deals 781 damage per tile. Destroy 5 AP