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

Unknown

The reason why he was "OP" was he is an outlier on the 4* power curve. He's still stronger than even most 280 boosted 3*s, with maybe the top 5 being at or near his power level. Now that cycled 3* boosts are happening the 4* power curve means less in relative power. XF was the strongest possible character before, now he's one among a handful which is good.

I personally think if the PvP buff rotation test happened before the Thor nerf D3 may have reconsidered. She's really wasn't all that strong comparatively to other 3*s at 280. At the very least they would see her damage is way out of proportion now, even for a 4* "Tank".

Unknown

Raffoon wrote:

I agree. I swapped him out for LThor in the past week.

I think that the buff rotation idea is great, but they overshot the magnitude of it just a bit. The aim according to their post was to essentially bump everyone up a rarity tier. They definitely did more than that with the buffs they gave out.

Seeing diversity was great. Seeing 4 stars made obsolete by maxed 3 stars wasn't so great. When I have to choose carefully between LThor and Xforce, then they'll have it right. Maybe something more like level 240 or 250 for 3 stars? 150-160 for 2 stars and 80-90 for 1 stars? (I'd defer to someone using a lot more 2 stars about the lower end for sure, though)

I dunno, I think that's more an issue of *** Thor being crazy good for a *** character. He was still better than all the other buffed ***s.

Unknown

Are people really unable to figure out that Thor 3* is an extremely strong character? Thor was dropping pretty much anyone that isn't himself in one Thunder Strike plus the nearly automatic Call the Storm it combos into, including other level 280 guys. No one else sure was able to drop a level 280 Thor in one move.

NorthernPolarity

Yeah, if your argument for xf being balanced is that the extreme outlier in 3* land is better than him when buffed to 4* levels, thats not much of an argument. People thought lazythor was better than fury UNBUFFED, for christs sake.

ZootSax

Raffoon wrote:

I agree. I swapped him out for LThor in the past week.

I think that the buff rotation idea is great, but they overshot the magnitude of it just a bit. The aim according to their post was to essentially bump everyone up a rarity tier. They definitely did more than that with the buffs they gave out.

Seeing diversity was great. Seeing 4 stars made obsolete by maxed 3 stars wasn't so great. When I have to choose carefully between LThor and Xforce, then they'll have it right. Maybe something more like level 240 or 250 for 3 stars? 150-160 for 2 stars and 80-90 for 1 stars? (I'd defer to someone using a lot more 2 stars about the lower end for sure, though)

As a 2-star player, the fact that Ares was boosted was what made it so easy to compete with much higher rosters--and that would have been true if he were buffed to "only" 150-160. Ares just has too many cheap/effective abilities. Outside of Ares & OBW, though, no other 2-stars gain nearly as much, so the boost to 170 will probably not make much of a difference in the great scheme of things. Daken, Torch & Thor are little different than their 3-star opposites, so they shouldn't be a big deal at 170--none dominate unfairly at 166 as it is. Captain Marvel would be solid, but far from game-breaking. Wolverine is demonstrably worse than Patch. Storm could be amazing, but she's also very slow, which would be crippling unless Mags was boosted along with her and a Level 94 Mags dies too quickly against a good PVP lineup MNMags would be very interesting now that he generates red...but still couldn't possibly have the impact as a buffed Ares. Hawkeye lives & dies by the ability to get off Speed Shot and not have the countdowns matched away, although having seen Level 134 countdowns eat through PVE, I would think the 170 one could be pretty devastating if you got it off. Even Moonstone might be decent in the PVP format, as the relative lack of countdown tiles in PVP make her purple a good, cheap damage source. Captain America is still terrible compared to LazyCap. Bullseye gains little-to-nothing from the level boost and Bagman is simply awful.

In short, except when Ares, OBW and Juggernaut are boosted, the format should be relatively balanced from 1- and 2-star land. I'm not sure I'd want it all the time, though...

atomzed

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Yeah, if your argument for xf being balanced is that the extreme outlier in 3* land is better than him when buffed to 4* levels, thats not much of an argument. People thought lazythor was better than fury UNBUFFED, for christs sake.

Not sure whether you were referring to my OP, but no I am not saying that he is balanced.

I am just saying saying that he doesn't feel OP when the other 3* is buffed to that level.

My point is that the nerf to Xforce, if ever there was one, may want to consider the rotating buffs as one of the factors.

Unknown

Xforce + Hood was still the best defensive team in the game, in my opinion.

He wasn't OP anymore, but he was still the best character.

You had your niches like Loki Patch. But they weren't particularly scary on defense and everyone had them anyway.

3 star Thor was better, but he still never cracked my top 3 teams of Xforce+Hood, Xforce+Loki and Loki+Patch.

He felt less OP, but the fact that he is still better than level 280 and 290 3 stars is going to rub D3 the wrong way.

EDIT: I see people were talking about how great 3 star Thor was. I'm surprised. I thought he was decent, but still the same weak character on defense and on offense, he wasn't particularly fast in the slightest. I still took Xforce over him every time. I didn't have to make a decision.

GrumpySmurf1002

onimus wrote:

Xforce + Hood was still the best defensive team in the game, in my opinion.
He wasn't OP anymore, but he was still the best character.
You had your niches like Loki Patch. But they weren't particularly scary on defense and everyone had them anyway.
3 star Thor was better, but he still never cracked my top 3 teams of Xforce+Hood, Xforce+Loki and Loki+Patch.
He felt less OP, but the fact that he is still better than level 280 and 290 3 stars is going to rub D3 the wrong way.

I would disagree, based on my experience. I attacked XForce-Hood with impunity. (I attacked XForce-whoever with impunity really). On the flip side, I mostly skipped Patch-Loki unless it was 30+. Reason being, if I can't deny green to XForce, it's 5k that Thor eats easily. If Patch gets it, it's at least 5k and another ~1300 a turn, and every cascade has a potential to wipe out a character. Unnecessary risk. Thor-Loki I mostly avoided late because it took too long.

Defensively, very few people were hitting me (using Thor-Loki), and I got more defensive wins (with Thor-Loki) above 700 pts in these 3 events than the last probably 50 PvPs combined. One caveat - with Daken I had to switch to Patch-Loki defensively, Thor apparently was less intimidating with strike tiles every where.

Assuming it continues, Hood won't be very scary because it's unlikely he'll be boosted again. That means whatever damage dealer is boosted will likely 1-shot his 5.1k health within a couple turns.

Unknown

Thor at 280 + The Hood is strictly better than X Force + The Hood. X Force might be better overall but in this combination you basically won't get Surgical Strike on defense most of the time and Call the Storm at 280 beats X Force in raw damage quiet comfortably and you have a good yellow too. Thor + Loki vs X Force + Loki is harder to tell because Surgical Strike does come into play, but it's safe to say that if your opponent defended black properly then the former is still strictly better, and black is probably slightly easier to defend than yellow since yellow is not a strong color without Thor. Due to massive boosts in the buff it is much easier to hide green as your strongest color which slightly weakens X Force. In all the X Force or Thor + support guy matches, having Thor in front puts red as the strongest color which X Force + support cannot use if the featured character doesn't cover red strongly (was only true with HT as featured out of the 3 we have).

Unknown

A 290 featured has a stronger color match than even the 280 buffed characters. For Daken it was SS black (to kill Daken) into SS Red usually.

I ran Thor + XF for my team, double the HP of the support guys and still generates green. I used CtS for 7000 damage plus 3700 if there were 3 guys up, or double XF if there were 2 guys up. Plus a use for red AP.

It's great that the boosts put more 3* players in positions to earn 4* covers and compete with 4* rosters. I hope they decide to keep it in the long run.

rednailz

onimus wrote:

Xforce + Hood was still the best defensive team in the game, in my opinion.

He wasn't OP anymore, but he was still the best character.

You had your niches like Loki Patch. But they weren't particularly scary on defense and everyone had them anyway.

3 star Thor was better, but he still never cracked my top 3 teams of Xforce+Hood, Xforce+Loki and Loki+Patch.

He felt less OP, but the fact that he is still better than level 280 and 290 3 stars is going to rub D3 the wrong way.

EDIT: I see people were talking about how great 3 star Thor was. I'm surprised. I thought he was decent, but still the same weak character on defense and on offense, he wasn't particularly fast in the slightest. I still took Xforce over him every time. I didn't have to make a decision.

Xforce/loki? why? I don't like that combo one bit, not on D anyway

TxMoose

To me it felt like d3 was

1) trying to get some data on how the strongest characters at each level scaled to the next level. How would a ****LThor perform compared to xf? How would a Lazy Ares compare to Lazy Thor or patch? (can you imagine if they released a Lazy Ares?) How would a ** Juggs compare to ares/thor?
2) trying to shake up pvp and get some out of their 'rut' of xf/4hor (that seems to have happened for many the 4hor nerf shook that up by itself)
and 3) trying to give players a taste of the 'next level'. Not sure they accomplished this because pretty much all ** players had an ares and most *** players had a LThor or patch (albeit less percentage than **s having ares), so it was similar groups of players just using characters with more health and more powerful abilities.

I'm glad I'm not in this group, but it kind of screwed over players who chose to max bp or cmags or blade or hulk first. My guess is their scores dropped off a cliff if they didn't have a usable thor/patch/loki/hood. I'm on the other side - just got a Lthor viable and hes in the 120s now, so my scores went from 300s to 500s almost immediately.

puppychow

During the select group buffed pvp characters week, my team of xf/hood/loki had 9 defensive wins in one event. I've never experienced anything like it before.

I used this combo in shield sim the previous season, and pushed my score to 2600+. It's effective against pretty much any team as long as the AI doesn't cheat with a crazy cascade.

Unknown

Ok, you couldn't play XF/Hood/Loki in either of the PvPs where the buffs were happening. Had to bring HT or Daken.

elwhiteninja

i have been trying to find out how does his black decide which strongest color to target when facing same level enemies? It seems to me to do the least number of tiles on the board but I cant figure it out for the life of me

Unknown

I'm so frustrated with all the nerf talk.

Point blank period he needs an adjustment

Point blank period, it does not need ot be a 'nerf', at least of sizable magnitude.

The wining on the forums would make you think they need to Sentry him, when in reality, somethign as simple as "SS ends turn" or "SS stuns" would fix most of the issue. Sure he'd still dominate, but he should, it would just no longer be instant death if he lands SS, just like Hood's yellow now.

But people are going to RUIN him.
- Unreall

elwhiteninja

11 black still takes a while to get, and you are still at mercy of the board. I cant tell you how many times i get 11 black only to have 1-5 of the strongest tiles on the board 2500 damage for 11 ap is nothing to write home about.

Quebbster

elwhiteninja wrote:

11 black still takes a while to get, and you are still at mercy of the board. I cant tell you how many times i get 11 black only to have 1-5 of the strongest tiles on the board 2500 damage for 11 ap is nothing to write home about.

If you are relying solely on Surgical Strike you are playing him wrong. Use a few X-forces to soften up the enemy and shake up the board. And obviously wait for the right time to go Surgical.

Unknown

Quebbster wrote:

elwhiteninja wrote:

11 black still takes a while to get, and you are still at mercy of the board. I cant tell you how many times i get 11 black only to have 1-5 of the strongest tiles on the board 2500 damage for 11 ap is nothing to write home about.

If you are relying solely on Surgical Strike you are playing him wrong. Use a few X-forces to soften up the enemy and shake up the board. And obviously wait for the right time to go Surgical.

Or SS a strong green user so you can go right into an X-Force.

Quebbster

ecir2002 wrote:

Quebbster wrote:

elwhiteninja wrote:

11 black still takes a while to get, and you are still at mercy of the board. I cant tell you how many times i get 11 black only to have 1-5 of the strongest tiles on the board 2500 damage for 11 ap is nothing to write home about.

If you are relying solely on Surgical Strike you are playing him wrong. Use a few X-forces to soften up the enemy and shake up the board. And obviously wait for the right time to go Surgical.

Or SS a strong green user so you can go right into an X-Force.

That may not work if the board is starved in green as elwhiteninja outlined. Of course, then you might not have enough AP for a Surgical Strike either...