**** Wolverine (X-Force) **** [PRE 2015-04]

john1620b

Phaserhawk wrote:

Then I think you can take him up to 224 or 225 before his Black outstrips someone else with a Secondary Black and then I think you can get him up to 227 before his yellow tanks all 3rd yellow abilties.

Nope -- 4* characters will tank all their colors, regardless of position, at level 222. It's weird, but true.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14594#p225138

Phaserhawk

john1620b wrote:

Phaserhawk wrote:

Then I think you can take him up to 224 or 225 before his Black outstrips someone else with a Secondary Black and then I think you can get him up to 227 before his yellow tanks all 3rd yellow abilties.

Nope -- 4* characters will tank all their colors, regardless of position, at level 222. It's weird, but true.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=14594#p225138

Yeah I went the wrong way, it's X-Force will tank a 3rd skill yellow at level 214

X-Force would tank a 2nd skil black at level 218

And then he tanks a primary green at level 222

So in a world of 3*'s if you want to keep X-Force completely hidden you would need to keep him at 213.

MojoWild

A cascade is when tiles fall into matches and cause more tiles to fall, which may create more matches. Whose ever turn it is gets the benefit of making that match and causing damage to the opponent. The Recovery tile is only designed to cause the damage of the initial explosion when activated. Any cascades are incidental. If it's matched on the enemy's turn, then those matches are enemy matches and would hurt you.

Conversely, if the rule did as you say it should, then when YOU make a Recovery match, then the match damage would hit you instead since you're the one who matched it, under your scenario. Which hopefully better illustrates why this doesn't really make sense to do it this way.

john1620b

Actually, 4*'s won't tank any of their colors until 222. That's why it's weird, because if it were decimal values, they would tank their colors earlier (like you say). But according to the testing I've done, they don't tank until 222, even though their match damage is the same as a 3*.

Unknown

This is not going to be a rant. I will just try to structure my thoughts on the character and encourage people to do the same.

When X-Force was tweaked the devs announced that he is going to be a beast and they weren't wrong.

For the longest time X-Force and Sentry peacefully coexisted.
After the Sentry nerf X-Force was the weapon of choice for hopping.
With the old shields if you spent enough HP you could somehow navigate the X-Force infested waters to a 1300 finish to nab yourself a cover for your own X-Force. Now the shields were also nerfed and the only thing that remains is X-Force.

This creates a bunch of problems. Every single top10 in PvP is consistently made up of 10 553 Xforces. I am still missing covers for him so what are my choices?
The 1300 progression reward is out of the question because i don't have him already and getting in first is also borderline impossible unless you get into a weak last minute bracket. Then there is Pve, where you once in a blue moon get to compete for the cover you need. ( I am missing 3 greens, so that isn't happening any time soon)
What you are left with is cracking tokens or buying his covers.

Currently I would argue that you need to already have X-Force (or maybe a maxed 4hor, which is the same thing really) to compete for his covers. Aside from that the character seems absolutely oppressive, still trying to decided which way on the sentry scale he tips though. All I know is I once again was cycling through nonstop 230+ X-Forces once I reached 600 points in pvp.

I'd like to hear from people who have a fully covered X-Force and from people who don't what their perspective on all this is. Have you bought covers for him?
Maybe Squirrel Girl is the solution, we will find out soon.

I am noticing an increase in X-Force activity aswell. It might have to do with people giving in and buying his covers. It's very likely we haven't seen the full extent of what's going on yet and it will only come to light in time when more and more people complete him. I would be very interested in the numbers over time of HP expenditure on X-Force covers. Likely not going to get them but I suspect he is a good earner.

Unknown

X Force is not as oppressive as Sentry was but that's not saying much.

Chrono_Tata

The main problem with having X-Force the top-tier in the game as opposed to Sentry or Magneto or Spider-Man and such is that X-Force is a 4-star character, and while it's been possible in the past for transitional players to max out the top-tier 3-star characters relatively easily, now the competitive level of the game is exclusive to big spenders and hardcore players who can max out 4-star characters.

I have a 5/4/4 X-Force and have been playing the game around the clock on Doctor Orders in order to win my last black cover, but once you get to around 900 points, all the good targets you get are maxed X-Force and Thoria. They are beatable, but take long enough that half my shield hops result in net losses of points. I've given up and will be saving up HP to buy the last cover instead.

NorthernPolarity

The solution is for demiurge to eventually lower progression awards like they said they would: without them doing so, your only luck is to top 2 a PvE that offers his covers, otherwise just hoard HP and buy his covers - it's the sad state of affairs the end game for this game is in.

Unknown

I'm really curious how the devs want to fix this. I have a solid roster with covered x and 9 high level 3*s but I'm in the same boat with 4* thora. Currently the game is stale for me, I see no chance to get a thora cover right now. For the 1300 reward I would have to spend 1500hp and put in a lot of effort, timing and luck. Just buying the covers is more attractive now but I don't see sense in spending 150$ on a character that will be replaced by a better one in a few weeks+. #1 placing would be possible in an event where the prize is a bagwoman but impossible on thora rewards.
For me the only reasonable thing to do currently is going for 600+ unshielded or if I need a cover go 900+ With two shields and stock up on my hp. Well done, d3.

GuntherBlobel

I have noticed a number of Rosters that have X-Force fully covered and only few other fully-covered characters. So, yes, some players see him as a quick way to advance in the game and just buy him at the first oppurtunity. X-Force alone might be enough to guarantee a Top 100 spot.

That said, if someone has purchased 10 X-Force covers, then they have already spent more than I ever plan to spend on MPQ and I thank them for their support of my favorite phone game.

My focus has been to rank on the stength of the featured character, usually leveled to around lvl 125. I often rank in the T25 or T50, without shielding.

If there had been any constant in this game, it has been that the high level game is dominated by one team or character. I don't blame X-Force for that.

Discloser: lvl 155 4/5/2 X-Force

DrNitroman

I don't have any fully covered 4 yet but I agree that transitioning to 4 is the more attractive goal at the moment. Indeed, gaining new 3 covers is less satisfying than before. Well, my problem is that I have to reconciliate these two opposed statements:
I'd like to transition to 4 (fully covering and leveling X-Force would be a good start)
I don't want to put the effort required to finish first

The conclusion seems obvious, I have to rely on token luck for the smallest part and on HP expenditure for the most part. The fact is that even without spending real money it's doable as the hp flow is not too bad now that I don't buy shield anymore...

... but I buy roster slots, I buy a roster slot every two weeks to hire new character due to what seems to be an obsessive completionist behavior (! !). Doing so, my hp stack is still growing but not very fast. Finally I think I have to choose between two conceptions of progress in game:

completing 4 characters OR recruiting every new character

Unknown

I have a fully covered 270 553 XF. Never bought any covers. Just played the game since the start, won a bunch mainly from progressions, token pulls, and the SHIELD resupply . I also want to add that XForce was one of the original characters in MPQ, so me (if not a sizable chunk of the community) probably had him sitting at 5/5/3 level 40 collecting dust for a year. I also have a 553 270 Fury. Again, obtained through token pulls, SHIELD resupply, and progression wins only.

Right now I'm trying to win Thoress covers and it's proving for me, at this current state, to be near-impossible to hit that 1300 mark. If I reach 950-100, most of the enemies I face will be teams of 270 XF/270 Thoress/Featured, worth only about ~20 points, and either I will take too long of a time/get sniped/run out of healthpacks before I can even make it to 1100, let alone 1300. And if you look at the people who currently are making it to 1300, it's the same top 3 or 5 alliances with all the members coordinating over LINE. So essentially, the shield cooldowns made it so that the EXACT same group of people from before are still winning, out-of-game coordination is now EVEN MORE essential than ever (given the cooldown times), while everyone else's progression is in stagnation. Currently the only way I have of winning a 4* is HOPING that I enter an easy slacker bracket and nobody else competes with me for first. It's highly unlikely, given the timing, effort, and luck required.

In conclusion:

• Demiurge SERIOUSLY needs to tweak the values to obtain progression rewards...
• ...and/or adjust the cooldown times of the shields to be less than the face value (eg. the 3 hour shield has a cooldown of 2h30m)
• ...and/or give us way more HP so we can directly buy the 4* covers (lol like that will ever happen)
• Having a 5/5/3 270 XF definitely helps a lot in PVP but isn't the magic panacea people probably think it is
• I'm disappointed that Demiurge has said they're going to be releasing a whole lot more 4*'s soon, but haven't yet solved the other issues to a satisfactory degree

babinro

I've said this for months now and I'm very much in the forum minority here but X-Force is severely overpowered.

I say this as someone who had him maxed as soon as the change was made and as someone who maxed out Thor very early on as well. I also have Fury maxed but he's not in the same league.

The OP paints pre-nerf Sentry and X-Force in the same light to which I disagree. Sentry only truly shined on defense and on hops. He was not a sustainable fighter to use in all modes of play. What makes X-Force game breaking is the fact that you can literally use him all day while only spending a health pack if things go horribly wrong. X-Force dominates PvP, PvE and LR's. He's so powerful that when PvE prevents his use I find many XF players have a bit of trouble adjusting. We use him as a crutch and immediately feel the difference.

X-Force is extremely powerful as he nearly one-shots vital support characters (enemy Hood/Loki) with only 8 green. He then controls the match upon casting surgical strike because it takes away the AI's main source of offense (most of the time) and lets you deal a ton of damage plus follow up with other skills (sometimes multiple times). First to surgical strike wins. It's that game changing of a skill.

Thor completely tears up the battlefield but requires 19 AP of prep to go off. She deals WAY more damage than X-Force but that prep time and lack of healing makes her more fair. She also only shines when there are 2 enemies left on the board. If there are 3 then the charge tiles can backfire against you. Hence why X-Force is played with her to quickly kill the weakest and let her mop up. It also helps that the AI has no clue how to play her. Often casting Smite prior to stun. The same can't be said with how the enemy X-Force is played.

There's a lot of ways you could try and balance X-Force but honestly the most game changing one would be to remove his true healing. Make his yellow temp heal. Really, this should be done for ALL characters in my opinion. Insane amounts of sustained play is exactly why the healing change nerfed OBW + Spidey to begin with. Yet we now have the same game with XF and to a lesser extent Patch/Daken.

If they wanted to potentially impact his presence in late game pvp's you'd have to nerf both his green and black skills. His black could cap the AP drain based on covers starting at 1 and maxing out at 5. The same cap would apply to how much AP he absorbs from gems on the board (max of 5). The green would just need a damage adjustment. Instead of averaging 4k it should average 3k. Nerfing 1000 damage may seem drastic for a skill but you have to remember that damage is only part of the reason his green is so great. It'll still cascade for AP, it'll still clear enemy strike/protect/CD tiles. It'll still be amazing in all areas of play. More to the point, this change allows support characters like Hood and Loki to live a little bit longer before death making the matches less trivial.

Conclusion: X-Force is SUPER fun to play with but IMO he's clearly game breaking in a bad way. Even compared against Thor he's in a league of his own due to nearly endless sustained play.

simonsez

babinro wrote:

There's a lot of ways you could try and balance X-Force but honestly the most game changing one would be to remove his true healing. His black could cap the AP drain based on covers starting at 1 and maxing out at 5. The green would just need a minor damage adjustment. This allows support characters like Hood and Loki to live a little bit longer before death making the matches a little less trivial.

I don't want fewer trivial matches if it means I have to stop playing or buy health packs.

I can never tell if arguments like this are from people who want the game to be more P2W, or if they just don't understand that this would be the result if they get what they want.

Colognoisseur

Let's look at the history of nerfs in MPQ:

Rags 2AP Thunderstrike Nerfed
gave rise to
2* Thor and 2* Wolverine aka Thorverine Nerfed
gave rise to
Spidey 2AP stunlock and endless healing Nerfed
gave rise to
C Mags plus Patch aka Patchneto C Mags Nerfed
gave rise to
Sentry Hood aka Sentry bombing Nerfed
gave rise to
X-Force and 4hor aka Thorverine 4.0 if it is nerfed it will
give rise to the next overwhelming strategy
This never ends the names of the characters being complained about is the only thing that changes.

babinro

simonsez wrote:

babinro wrote:

There's a lot of ways you could try and balance X-Force but honestly the most game changing one would be to remove his true healing. His black could cap the AP drain based on covers starting at 1 and maxing out at 5. The green would just need a minor damage adjustment. This allows support characters like Hood and Loki to live a little bit longer before death making the matches a little less trivial.

I don't want fewer trivial matches if it means I have to stop playing or buy health packs.

I can never tell if arguments like this are from people who want the game to be more P2W, or if they just don't understand that this would be the result if they get what they want.

My suggestion comes out of desire to see a better overall game.

Remove X-Force, Patch and to a lesser degree Daken/Groot from the game and you'd have a completely different game. To me, this just illustrates a broken design that players accept because it means we can play longer.

Remove all versions of Thor, Fury and Black Panther from the game and nothing changes. We simply move on to different damage dealing characters and the core game is not impacted. You could even remove OBW, Hood and Loki and still have the same core game. There are other forms of support and AP generation/control.

Removing true healing entirely (or minimizing it to the point where it can't be exploited) instantly improves roster diversity substantially. I think other changes would then need to be made to offset the P2W pressure though. Substantially increasing the heal rate of wounded characters for example. Imagine if true healing was expressed through a 1 hour heal rate vs other characters that all took 2 hours (regardless of health). There might be better ways to implement this I'm just thinking aloud really.

Unknown

1. "Pay up or shut up" is the freemium games' mantra. Haven't met a single one where this wasn't true.
2. Quite sure XForce will be the next one nerfed. Instead of complaining with how powerful it is, think ahead and try to figure out what the next invincible team will be. And pay up for those heroes' covers, of course )

simonsez

babinro wrote:

My suggestion comes out of desire to see a better overall game.

I just don't know what that means from your perspective. To me, fighting a battle and getting killed or too crippled to fight a second one, isn't making it a better game for me. I want to grind points and grind ISO. Having every battle be a potential wipe is completely counter to that.

babinro

simonsez wrote:

babinro wrote:

My suggestion comes out of desire to see a better overall game.

I just don't know what that means from your perspective. To me, fighting a battle and getting killed or too crippled to fight a second one, isn't making it a better game for me. I want to grind points and grind ISO. Having every battle be a potential wipe is completely counter to that.

I see what you mean.

I suppose the only way to counter that would be to give everyone instant healing to full health post battle. You only spend health packs when a character is downed during battle. This would allow sustained play for ALL characters while also instantly giving protect tiles far more value.

If health packs are truly a drop in the bucket for revenue as D3 claims...then I guess this idea would be win/win for everyone? It would sure change the face of PvP scores

DrNitroman

Colognoisseur wrote:

Let's look at the history of nerfs in MPQ:

Rags 2AP Thunderstrike Nerfed
gave rise to
2* Thor and 2* Wolverine aka Thorverine Nerfed
gave rise to
Spidey 2AP stunlock and endless healing Nerfed
gave rise to
C Mags plus Patch aka Patchneto C Mags Nerfed
gave rise to
Sentry Hood aka Sentry bombing Nerfed
gave rise to
X-Force and 4hor aka Thorverine 4.0 if it is nerfed it will
give rise to the next overwhelming strategy
This never ends the names of the characters being complained about is the only thing that changes.

I like history, thanks!
It's really enlightning to put things in context... and ironically, this list underlined that I was always a bit too slow in leveling the 'heroes of the month'. I missed all of the synergies listed but wasn't long to level characters implied in synergy after nerf.

As I only have 9 XF covers currently, one could conclude that X-Force nerf isn't for tomorrow. In the other hand, one could conclude that X-Force can still be nerfed tomorrow, this would just mean that'll be dramatically more lucky in harvesting his cover!