*** Iron Man (Model 40) ***

dfields3710

Lerysh wrote:

dfields3710 wrote:

Ok I see what everybody is saying. He gets replaced by other characters. I know that, that's why I said earlier that his ap cost are too high. But in my opinion (should of said that earlier), his ap cost is normal because I put him on teams that heal and steal ap( spiderman, blade, etc.)

Side Note: He's the 3* equivalent of Iron Man. His cost is proportionate to his damage like unibeam.

"Being Ironman" is not a reason to have high cost powers. He's simply one of the oldest characters in existence and thus his powers show their power creep rust. It doesn't matter if you have AP steal on your team, because that AP can be better fed to other characters. His power cost is just too damn high.

I could see something like Cyclops/Fury working where if you don't have the bonus color AP you stun yourself, or if you DO have the bonus color AP you do extra damage and stun yourself. Bottom line is his powers need revisted. 13 AP should net you no less than 6000 damage right now.

I understand that and agree about his ap cost but I'm saying if they don't revisit him I'm suggesting options to make him useful that's all

trey9

It becomes pretty obvious how underpowered IM40 is when his red costs the same as luke cage's yellow, and does about the same damage boosted to 290 that luke cage does at 166. And drains you other ap on top of that. Granted, cage's yellow is one of the more powerful abilities and only deals the full damage conditionally, but come on. He has obviously needed a rework for some time, so hopefully the devs can repair him like they repaired doom and loki with their additional powers.

dkffiv

trey9 wrote:

It becomes pretty obvious how underpowered IM40 is when his red costs the same as luke cage's yellow, and does about the same damage boosted to 290 that luke cage does at 166. And drains you other ap on top of that. Granted, cage's yellow is one of the more powerful abilities and only deals the full damage conditionally, but come on. He has obviously needed a rework for some time, so hopefully the devs can repair him like they repaired doom and loki with their additional powers.

Not that its entirely justified but his costs are under the assumption you are generating a lot of your own AP with Recharge. Same reasoning as why Rag's abilities all suck ****.

Mawtful

Since he's back in the spotlight at the moment, there's a lot of discussion about how he could use some more time in the shop. To me, it seems that Recharge is actually the core of all Iron Man's problems; his red and blue seem to have their costs inflated since Recharge fuels his colours primarily, but it's a 3 turn cooldown followed by 2 turns of stun before you get to use that AP. But a high AP cost isn't the only problem with his attacks, they also drain AP from the rest of your pools and damage output is comparatively low.

I like the idea of drawing power from other systems, and I think there are a few other ways to do that.

Unibeam (Active Red, 8 AP)
Tony Stark diverts all power to a focused energy beam fired from Model 40's chest.
Deals X damage and Y damage to himself. Creates a 3-turn countdown which restores Z health.

Level 2: Increase damage.
Level 3: Reduces countdown to 2-turns.
Level 4: Increase damage.
Level 5: Reduces self damage, increases heal.

I'm stealing a bit from Ares' Sunder here. Since that power is supposed to represent a "moment of weakness" for Ares after he exerts himself, I think it could definitely be applied here as well.

Ballistic Salvo (Active Blue, 14 AP)
Fires a volley of targeted missiles. Deal X team damage and destroy 3 random basic tiles, does not generate AP.

Rank 2: Increase Damage.
Rank 3: Destroy 2 additional tiles.
Rank 4: Increase Damage.
Rank 5: Destroy 3 additional tiles.

With the cost reduction, I think that max damage should remain unchanged. This is pretty close to being on par with Thor's Call the Storm; fractionally less damage to the primary target, fractionally more damage to the additional targets, possibility of cascades.

Overcharge (Passive Black)
Iron Man empties the reserve tanks and overcharges his weapon systems.
Requires 6 AP in each colour; when Iron Man activates an ability, drain 6 AP from each colour and fire the ability again. Iron Man is stunned for 2 turns.

Rank 2: Requires/Drains 4 AP.
Rank 3: Reduces stun to 1 turn.
Rank 4: Requires/Drains 2 AP.
Rank 5: Removes stun.

I think I'm still tinkering with this ability, but this is good enough to understand how I want it to work. This lets you "double tap" Iron Man's abilities at the cost of your whole AP pool. In its current state, it works better with higher costed abilities, so may I just need to pump up Unibeam again.

ronin_san

I do like them. I like the costs, too. If I'm honest, though...

RE: stock IM40

He needs to have his and his revisited. Certainly with Cyclops and Luke Cage, we see relevant damage at 13 and with 14-19 with GSBW and Thor.

I think he should stun himself in overexerting his suit, warranting a reboot, if he doesn't have the 2-4 AP in the other AP reserves. Remove the AP gain stun from his . That's it. He gets A LOT better.

Cut the red by 2 and the blue by 4. Nix the yellow stun. He's viable.

Unknown

This is how I would modify Recharge:
Ironman 40 AP 6
Recharges weapon systems. Drain's all your yellow. Creates 3 Countdown tiles that activate after 2 turns, restoring 3 Red AP each. Iron Man is then stunned for 2 turns as systems reinitialize.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Each Countdown tile also restores 3 Blue AP if you had 8 Yellow.
Level 3: Each Countdown tile also restores 2 Green AP if you had 10 Yellow.
Level 4: Each Countdown tile also restores 2 Purple AP if you had 12 Yellow.
Level 5: Each Countdown tile also restores 2 Black AP if you had 14 Yellow.

Takes all your yellow to cast, similar to Ares Onslaught for green, but has a variant effect based on how much yellow you had. May not be enough to push some people off of 5/5/3 but it would put an end to the 5/5/1 builds at the very least.

For Ballistic Salvo at cost 14 to do 2600 team damage I would either have it select 3 targest, blow up 2x2s (40 tiles) and do 220 damage per tile destroyed to the enemy team, or have it randomly throw out 5 2x2 targets, and have it do ~70 damage per tile destoryed, where damage will fluctuate for overlapping targets and targets fired at the bottom row.

Unibeam is either fine if you take off the -2s to everything or needs it's cost reduced to 10 with the -2s or have it's damage upped to 5400 for 13.

TheVulture

My take - trying to keep on theme with the current flavour text, whilst making him more useable.:

Unibeam - Red 7
Tony Stark diverts all power to a focused energy beam fired from Model 40's chest. Deals 473 damage and ends your turn.

Level 2: 5% damage. Level 3: 5% damage. Level 4: 10% damage. Level 5: Doesn't end your turn if you have 7 Blue AP and 7 Yellow AP.

Max Level: 3559 damage

It's a hard-balancing act for red damage powers, as Human Torch and Cyclops have set the bar so high for damage w/ small positive effects on top - this attempt slightly undercuts them for a potential downside + Iron Man having more health and an AP generator below.
Also went with '777' as a Vegas reference for Tony Stark's high-roller lifestyle.

Ballistic Salvo - Blue 12
Fires 3 charged homing missiles. Each does 355 damage to a random enemy and craters the battlefield, destroying 1 tile (generates no AP).

Level 2: 10% damage. Level 3: Each missile destroys 2 tiles. Level 4: 10% damage. Level 5: Each missile destroys 3 tiles.

Max Level: 2669 damage

Along the lines of Lerysh's thinking above, this is a bit weaker than the modern team damage skills but has devastating potential the fewer enemies you're facing as the missile home in on them.

Recharge - Yellow 9
Recharges weapon systems. Creates a 3-turn Yellow Countdown tile.
(PASSIVE) At the beginning of each turn, create 1 Red Charged tile for each Recharge Countdown tile.

Level 2: Creates either 1 Red Charged tile or 1 Blue Charged Tile. Level 3: Creates 1 Red Charged Tile and 1 Blue Charged Tile. Level 4: If the Countdown is matched, you gain 3 Red AP. Level 5: If the Countdown is matched, you gain 3 Blue AP.

No idea if this one is sensibly balanced - just wanted to work in an obvious link between Recharge and charged tiles, now that they're a thing.

Kolence

I'll give it a try too...

Recharge - Yellow 10
Recharges weapon systems. Creates a Green, Purple and Black Countdown tile that activate after 2 turns, each restoring 2 & AP and 1 AP of its color. Iron Man is then stunned for 1 turn as systems reinitialize. If a CD is matched, a Yellow charged tile appears on the board.

Level 2: Each Countdown tile restores 2 AP of its color. Level 3: Each Countdown tile restores 3

& AP.
Level 4: Each Countdown tile restores 3 AP of its color.
Level 5: A second ( , or ) charged tile appears when a CD is matched.

Pwuz_

Mawtful wrote:

:blackflag: Overcharge (Passive Black)
Iron Man empties the reserve tanks and overcharges his weapon systems.
Requires 6 AP in each colour; when Iron Man activates an ability, drain 6 AP from each colour and fire the ability again. Iron Man is stunned for 2 turns.

Rank 2: Requires/Drains 4 AP.
Rank 3: Reduces stun to 1 turn.
Rank 4: Requires/Drains 2 AP.
Rank 5: Removes stun.

I think I'm still tinkering with this ability, but this is good enough to understand how I want it to work. This lets you "double tap" Iron Man's abilities at the cost of your whole AP pool. In its current state, it works better with higher costed abilities, so may I just need to pump up Unibeam again.

I really like this idea! Not 100% that it needs to change from Yellow to Black, but even still I think there are better ways to change Unibeam & Ballistic Salvo.

1st change both to be the same AP cost, something around 12-14 would be good.
Balance their damage so that Unibeam does single target damage equal to Ballistic Salvo's cumulative damage against 2 opponents.

The reason for this balancing is to make it roughly equal between using Overcharge for either move. Otherwise it makes the higher AP base cost of Ballistic Salvo far more worth use with Overcharge than Unibeam would be.

The other potential option is rather than have Overcharge use a set AP for either, it could be a percentage of the ability cost. I'd also advocate that it has a set drain from only the other 4 colors.

Level 1: Requires/Drains 50% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 2: Requires/Drains 40% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 3: Requires/Drains 30% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 4: Stuns for only 1 turn.
Level 5: Requires/Drains 20% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.

So keeping things with your revised AP costs and rounding up as well:
Unibeam's extra cost would be 4/4/3/2
Ballistic Salvo's extra cost would be 7/6/5/3

Mawtful

Pwuz_ wrote:

I really like this idea! Not 100% that it needs to change from Yellow to Black, but even still I think there are better ways to change Unibeam & Ballistic Salvo.

1st change both to be the same AP cost, something around 12-14 would be good.
Balance their damage so that Unibeam does single target damage equal to Ballistic Salvo's cumulative damage against 2 opponents.

The change from yellow to black was really just my own internal reasoning. I've been trying to nail down my own take on the "colour pie" for MPQ. To me, Black should be used to represent Destruction and Chaos; a lot of black powers already fit this definition (attack tiles from Hailstorm/Summon Demons, ap theft/destruction from Surgical Strike/Nightstalker, and Deadpool's Life of the Party is supposed to represent his chaotic nature). Since "Overcharge" is draining your own AP but firing an ability for a second time, I felt it was closer to black than yellow (which seems to be traditionally the "Protector" colour).

Lots of good ideas from everyone. Overcharge will have to scale cost as a percentage, otherwise the single target ability ends up becoming kind of monstrous. For example, if the AoE is dealing ~3k damage to each target (not an unrealistic amount), then the single target is hitting for ~9k damage, coupled with the Overcharge double-tapping, we've flipped the problem - it's now almost always better to cast the single target ability since you'll probably take out 2 enemies.
I also like tying the damage of Ballistic Salvo to the tile destruction and blowing up small chunks of the board. So my second pass on remodeling looks a bit like this:

Unibeam (Active Yellow, 8 AP)
Tony Stark diverts all power to a focused energy beam fired from Model 40's chest.
Deals X damage and Y damage to himself. Creates a 3-turn countdown which restores Z health.

Level 2: Increase damage.
Level 3: Reduces countdown to 2-turns.
Level 4: Increase damage.
Level 5: Increase self-heal.

Yes, I've changed the colour, and yes, I did only just say that yellow was traditionally the "protector" colour. This brings it more in-line with Ares' Sunder, due to self true heal. It also lets me change Ballistic Salvo to red, since I removed the stun it doesn't really resemble a blue type ability.
I think that Unibeam could probably be close to equivalent with Human Torch's Fireball. By comparison, Unibeam has a self damage drawback and doesn't destroy tiles.

Ballistic Salvo (Active Red, 14 AP)
Fires a volley of targeted missiles. Destroys a random 2x2 tile block, dealing X damage to each enemy per tile. Does not generate AP.

Rank 2: Increase Damage.
Rank 3: Destroy an additional random 2x2 block.
Rank 4: Increase Damage.
Rank 5: Destroy an additional random 2x2 block.
Max Damage: Deals ~210 damage to each enemy per tile destroyed (~2520 damage to each enemy).

Not happy with the rank progression: bigger numbers for each step is kinda boring, and this essentially forces rank 5 to make this ability worth considering. I may readdress this later. At 14 AP for ~2520 dmg to each enemy, this comes in at a lower ap:damage ratio than Call the Storm, but does provide some board shakeup. I think it's probably pretty close to spot on. Also, red for damage.

For the sake of discussing my personal colour pie again, I think Red is the primary colour for ranged or energy damage and red abilities are more likely to have conditional bonus damage (ref: various Photon Blasts, Fireball, etc.). In this case, it's the possibility of cascades. Green is primarily melee or physical damage, and often with "support" effects like the creation of special tiles (ref: Berserker Rage, Judgement, Shou-Lao Fang Strike, etc).

Overcharge (Passive Black)
I'm just going to steal Pwuz's suggestion. This really articulated what I wanted the ability to be.
Level 1: Requires/Drains 50% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 2: Requires/Drains 40% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 3: Requires/Drains 30% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.
Level 4: Stuns for only 1 turn.
Level 5: Requires/Drains 20% AP ability cost from Green/Black/Yellow/Purple.

So keeping things with your revised AP costs and rounding up as well:
Unibeam's extra cost would be 4/4/3/2
Ballistic Salvo's extra cost would be 7/6/5/3

And now I guess he's Yellow/Red/Black. Not too much competition in that combination.

Unknown

If we're not going for a fundamental change in what the ability does then Unibeam would probably just do way more damage. Ballistic Salvo should always stun 1 guy and cost less. Recharge would be 10 yellow AP flat with its current effects. Now if you want something interesting in the revamp, that's what devs get paid to do.

Unknown

Reading this thread and want to throw out a subtle but potentially significant change to Ballistic Salvo.

Instead of AOE Damage make it 3 individual hits. If three enemies still up it does the same thing, but if only one enemy remains they take the entire brunt of the salvo. It is still overcosted but by the time someone has 20 blue saved up odds are there are not going to be all three targets left. But even then its 20(+?) Ap for 8k damage and a stun which is not entirely awesome.

Unknown

I personally like Red/Blue as they are, however Yellow (Recharge) is my biggest beef. One thing that occured to me was this idea.

Instead of increasing the AP cost with each yellow cover, what if we kept it at a static cost (possibly 8, maybe 10) but instead of creating 3 tiles that each restore 3 of each color, create a seperate tile for each color. So for example, at 3 covers instead of creating 3 yellow tiles that grant 3 Red, 3 Blue, and 2 Green, why not create 3 red count down tiles that create 3 red AP, 3 count down tiles that create 3 blue AP, and 3 green count down tiles that grant 2 Green AP.

While the power would get more and more powerful as you add yellow covers, because all the additional AP is spread out over more and more count down tiles that adds the risk of matches being made to clear them, the AP cost wouldn't have to rise. As it is, I would never put 4-5 covers on yellow due to the constant cost increase. I find 10 AP with 3 to be a little slower than I like, but perhaps this would help to offset the increased power by spreading out the AP over multiple multiple tiles instead of increasing the AP cost.

hesjingixen

Cryptobrancus wrote:

Reading this thread and want to throw out a subtle but potentially significant change to Ballistic Salvo.

Instead of AOE Damage make it 3 individual hits. If three enemies still up it does the same thing, but if only one enemy remains they take the entire brunt of the salvo. It is still overcosted but by the time someone has 20 blue saved up odds are there are not going to be all three targets left. But even then its 20(+?) Ap for 8k damage and a stun which is not entirely awesome.

I like this idea. One super hit late in the game is usually more useful than an AE by the time you have that much blue. Could still lower the cost a bit, but it's a step in the right direction.

I'm still reading through all of the different ideas, but I just wanted to add that the recent Thick of Thieves event REALLY made it apparent that model 40 needs work. They gave you a loaner model 40 in the same fight with a loaner Cyclops, and it became readily apparent that Cyclops' red does more damage, for less cost, AND destroys a row instead of draining team AP.....yeah, Unibeam needs love. You can't even use the argument that Unibeam costs more because it can be generated with Recharge, because Cyclops has a red generator too.

Nellyson

Mawtful wrote:

Pwuz_ wrote:

I really like this idea! Not 100% that it needs to change from Yellow to Black, but even still I think there are better ways to change Unibeam & Ballistic Salvo.

1st change both to be the same AP cost, something around 12-14 would be good.
Balance their damage so that Unibeam does single target damage equal to Ballistic Salvo's cumulative damage against 2 opponents.

And now I guess he's Yellow/Red/Black. Not too much competition in that combination.

Ummmm....not true. and both are and they have really good powers. Even has that set up. There are quite a few of this combination already.

Unknown

dkffiv wrote:

trey9 wrote:

It becomes pretty obvious how underpowered IM40 is when his red costs the same as luke cage's yellow, and does about the same damage boosted to 290 that luke cage does at 166. And drains you other ap on top of that. Granted, cage's yellow is one of the more powerful abilities and only deals the full damage conditionally, but come on. He has obviously needed a rework for some time, so hopefully the devs can repair him like they repaired doom and loki with their additional powers.

Not that its entirely justified but his costs are under the assumption you are generating a lot of your own AP with Recharge. Same reasoning as why Rag's abilities all suck ****.

It's very flawed reasoning these days when there are characters like Cyclops and Kamala that also generate AP for themselves but actually manage to do something with it, as well as not stunning themselves, not to mention, both character's abilities only take 3 matches, not 4 to use(with the 5/5/3 build, assuming no 4+ matches and yes, I realize he generates for 3 colours)

He can still put out damage, it's just not god damage for the cost and effort, if you plan on using his yellow for his own abilities, taking a minimum of 4 turns (again, with the 5/5/3 build, assuming no 4+ matches) to get the AP to take another 2 turns for the countdown, before stunning yourself for 2 turns means he gets to fire off 4175 damage after 8 turns if you've managed to get the other 4 red you need AND protect ALL of your yellow tiles. For the same effort as just getting your recharge going, you can do 11k damage with Black Panther, or at least the 2500 damage on Thor's yellow which is far more likely to give cascades, and obviously fuels Thor's green. Or skip ALL of that and fire off cyclops' red for 10 AP that does 100 more damage.

I'd love to see D3 actually pay attention to older characters more than dumping health on them, but given the glacial pace of character updates and D3's tendency to overcompensate with almost every adjustment I don't expect to see anything great coming anytime soon.

StevO-J

I can say that I agree on (almost) all points made in earlier posts about his powers being too expensive and having too many negative side effects, but if he gets changed I think I'm really going to miss his 2 cover recharge in combination with LCap and MNMags. I know that it's a niche use that is might not be intended or something to keep in place, but I absolutely love using that combo in high level goon nodes. Boost +2 yellow/red (for insane scaling nodes especially), make 2 yelllow matches and the node is as good as done, or you'd have to get some really unwanted cascades that remove LCap's CD tiles. Some of the most 'puzzley' gameplay you can get IMO, with stunning the right goon and removing the right goon CD tiles.

As I said, I can't blame the devs if a rework would remove this, bacause IM40 really isn't that good on his own, but as a red/blue battery he is quite useful.

Unknown

With Simulator rolling in today with 3* Ironman's yellow as the progression reward, I was wondering if leaving his yellow at 2 covers still a good build. He's currently sitting at 4/5/2 in my roster.

Spiritclaw

dathremar wrote:

With Simulator rolling in today with 3* Ironman's yellow as the progression reward, I was wondering if leaving his yellow at 2 covers still a good build. He's currently sitting at 4/5/2 in my roster.

That's a decision to make based on who you want to team him with. If you have a use for green ap on his team, it's perfectly reasonable to get the third yellow cover. Besides, it will raise your level cap a bit!

Ryz-aus

dathremar wrote:

With Simulator rolling in today with 3* Ironman's yellow as the progression reward, I was wondering if leaving his yellow at 2 covers still a good build. He's currently sitting at 4/5/2 in my roster.

I've got him at 1, 2, and 3 yellow. 3 yellow never gets used - only reason I still have him is for the eventual respec.