Let's Make Vision Great For Once

OnesOwnGrief

This has been bothering me since the updates went live and it only took the Made Man PvP for me to realize just how little they actually did for Vision. I would like to thank the developers for attempting to update Vision but I feel you could have done a much better job than what was given. Some number boosting just wasn't going to fix his underlying issues.

First, I want to address some R95 information.
- Changed enemy behavior for Vision. He no longer casts Heavy or Light if his Heavy or Light countdown tile is already on the board.

In my honest opinion. this sounds super misleading and that the way in which I envisioned this working did not come to pass. One of the most glaring flaws when it comes to Vision is the AI behavior of how his skills work. He would constantly stance switch between Heavy and Light if he were to have the AP for either. I propose some sort of code change for these abilities that would cause the AI to check if his Blue or Yellow tile on the board and prevent him from casting the other if it's present. Get some value out of those tiles while they are still on the board instead of eating through its own AP pool. Adding a statement that would cause the AI to activate Yellow over Blue would also need to be added as well.

Now that I got that out of the way, I want to go over his skills.

Blue

One of the main issues that was clearly apparent during the Made Man PvP was that the weekly buffs have made it quite easy for Vision to actually not tank a single color. The power curves being changed put him in such a bad position that his Blue, as well as Yellow, is now ****. This is a very serious issue for any character that requires tanking a color in order for a power to work. (Lets not bring in X-23) Despite the increase in damage, I feel this power would have been better off just mirroring Reed's skill. Let's be serious here, this power is literally a better version of Reed's when it works, minus the additional turns.

What I feel would be better is if the ability allowed the increase in damage for any Red, Blue, or Yellow Match. A reduction in strength obviously (crazy, I know. It was just buffed) but it would help the team far more than what it does now. To make things better, could we place the tile on a color such Green, Black, or Purple?

Yellow

As stated above, Yellow suffers from the whole tanking thing. It also suffers even more in the fact that enemy teams can be moved. A tile that only effects him is ineffectual in such a situation and requires an entire rework. One of the things I have liked recently is the number of new ability mechanics that have appeared since X-23's release. With this as a defensive skill, I think its time to bring one of those new mechanics to this character for a positive change.

My change for yellow is that we bring the percentage based modifiers to the 3* tier with Vision. With Venom capping out at 65% for his black power, I would be completely comfortable with Vision capping out at 30-35% (to a minimum of 1) at 5 covers. As this skill modifies his red to affect Strike and Protect tiles for damage, his Yellow could be changed to reduce the damage of just Strike and Protect tiles. This would give him some sort of edge when it comes to special tile spammers such as Blade, Daken, etc.

Red

Unmodified: When this skill is unmodified with Blue or Yellow, it does a single target attack with an okay board shake. Nothing major, nothing exciting. I wouldn't expect anything like IM40 Red or Cyke Red and it's honestly fine the way it is.

Blue Modified: To compensate for the change to Blue I suggested earlier, I would raise the base damage of this ability while adding the bonus damage of the blue tile. As it stands now, this skill does respectable AOE and it's merely just to balance out the reduction in Blue's strength.

Yellow Modified: Let's face it, this power doesn't really get that used as the AOE is just a much better option overall. The buff in damage was nice but it could have been increased further. I would say ~3k damage would be adequate. It would still have that zing of a single target attack from an unmodified Red but the second tile would effectively double it. Special tile generating infidels must be punished and Blade won't think he's that hot when he loses 2/3rds of his health from Vision.

These are changes would step Vision into a more focused support role with a respectable nuke for 10AP (+5B/Y). As he stands now, it's as if he has no idea what he wants to be and that's quite bad. I would also like for anyone who has a better idea to add their own within the thread. If these changes sound good, hit that thumbs up. If a mod feels this should be somewhere else, go ahead and move it. It's been some time since I made a serious post but I think the devs really messed up with this character, far more than they did with Quicksilver who is arguably very fun to play with now after his changes.

puppychow

Started playing Vision pvp, and I saw that the AI was still doing the blue/yel tile dance. As a player, I could certainly take solace in the fact that if I leave Kamala on defense, the AI will help keep my team alive.

Honestly, the changes to Vision have been meh, and pretty much focused on dealing with the introduction of fortified tiles. I would like to see yellow+red combo to do more damage, at least something comparable to Bullseye's pink ability. The thing that bothers me is that you could trigger that tile turning ability for only 7 pink aps, but Vision's tile turning effectively requires 15 aps. It makes ZERO sense for BE to do MORE damage while requiring LESS ap. Vision's tile turning should be doing at least 50% more damage than it is currently.

Jarvind

For one, I wouldn't hold out for another change to a character that was just buffed - the ROI on it just isn't there from a dev standpoint. While his AI is still pretty lousy, he is a pretty solid character in player hands.

Second, rather than shuffling all his abilities around, lowering this and increasing that, I feel like the following fix would be much simpler and more effective. Do away with his yellow altogether and replace it with a passive ability that, on a yellow match, creates a 1-turn CD that brings him to the front like Colossus and gives him damage reduction. As you said, his yellow-modified red ability basically never gets used anyway, and this also helps with his reliance on tanking and eliminates the density-switching issue.

But, yeah, wishful thinking. I wouldn't expect any further buffs to Vision.

wymtime

Here is a simple way to make him much better and it is all with his red. When red is on its own it does 2300 AOE damage plus the + board shake. With blue out it does single target damage of 6000. His red with blue out should be really strong.

His blue can be based off of his match damage or lower the damage and make it on R,B,Y matches

nigelregal

puppychow wrote:

Started playing Vision pvp, and I saw that the AI was still doing the blue/yel tile dance. As a player, I could certainly take solace in the fact that if I leave Kamala on defense, the AI will help keep my team alive.

I noticed this as well and was surprised because I thought that was the main change to him was so this wouldn't happen.

jredd

i wasn't sure his buff had even been applied. he still really is just kinda lame...

Omega Blacc

I happen to like Vision quite a bit, but he does require more work to be a better character.

I totally agree that his AI should quit randomly changing density. Although it never made any real sense, at least the tiles would break and cause potential matches/cascades. Now they just lose the ability and the timer.

I propose a buff in damage to solar beam, maybe 1.5K more.

I propose Heavy Strike to get board shake along with the AOE damage. It destroys the Heavy Density tile if you activate it. Otherwise you get the match damage until the blue tile counts down.

Make his yellow cost a little bit more, but give Light Density a stun and airborne immunity...he is INTANGIBLE. Basically turn it into PX invisibility.

Just my $0.02

carrion_pigeons

The simplest change would be to just make his countdown tiles increase his actual match damage to guarantee he tanks the colors he's supposed to tank.

GMadMan040

carrion pigeons wrote:

The simplest change would be to just make his countdown tiles increase his actual match damage to guarantee he tanks the colors he's supposed to tank.

This.

Vision is a fantastic character. There are a number of very viable teams that he sits on and does well with. The dude is an absolute phenom under the right circumstances. Like Wilt Chamberlain rookie year phenom.

The catch? He MUST be tanking his colors. With the completely whackballs restructure of match damage and skill damage, he's out of alignment. It would have been just fine keeping him exactly as is while simply creating some means for him to tank when it is appropriate to tank. There have been plenty of solutions to this offered, no need to repeat them, and....sigh...no reason to believe they will ever happen.

All that said, he does more than 5* match damage when his blue CD is out and he is hitting his tanked colors. The right cascade can practically one-shot other 3*'s. That alone makes him at least moderately viable. Personally, I use Vision all the time.

NOTE - Yes he is, even post update, THE WORST on defense.

OnesOwnGrief

carrion pigeons wrote:

The simplest change would be to just make his countdown tiles increase his actual match damage to guarantee he tanks the colors he's supposed to tank.

Honestly, this never really occurred to me as I was typing. Increasing his match damage would alleviate one of his main problems.

Omega Blacc wrote:

Make his yellow cost a little bit more, but give Light Density a stun and airborne immunity...he is INTANGIBLE. Basically turn it into PX invisibility.

I like this idea a lot. Intangibility should make him more difficult to hit. Even losing out the stun, I would take the airborne immunity.

puppychow

nigelregal wrote:

puppychow wrote:

Started playing Vision pvp, and I saw that the AI was still doing the blue/yel tile dance. As a player, I could certainly take solace in the fact that if I leave Kamala on defense, the AI will help keep my team alive.

I noticed this as well and was surprised because I thought that was the main change to him was so this wouldn't happen.

True to my word, I have been leaving Kamala on defense, and most player seem to know AI well enough to steer clear of me.

madsalad

puppychow wrote:

nigelregal wrote:

puppychow wrote:

Started playing Vision pvp, and I saw that the AI was still doing the blue/yel tile dance. As a player, I could certainly take solace in the fact that if I leave Kamala on defense, the AI will help keep my team alive.

I noticed this as well and was surprised because I thought that was the main change to him was so this wouldn't happen.

True to my word, I have been leaving Kamala on defense, and most player seem to know AI well enough to steer clear of me.

Damn, I should have put out OML and KK with this dummy.

jredd

would this work??

red - stays as is.

blue - creates a countdown tile and 3 strength tiles (say 200 each at 5 covers). this way the whole team benefits. as long as the cd tile is on the board it'll keep 3 strength tiles.

yellow - same as with blue but defence tiles rather than strength.

bump up the ap cost a bit on each of the blue/yellow to compensate for them being beneficial for the entire team.