Soul Gem Season Character Update (1/9/17)

Brigby

With the upcoming Soul Gem Season, we will be updating the powers of Steve Rogers (First Avenger). Steve Rogers is a 5-Star hero that was released alongside 5-Star Iron Man in the special Civil War Boss Battle event. Our goal is to make Cap feel stronger overall and to have his powers represent a more team-oriented theme.

You can see the changes for yourself this Thursday when the Soul Gem Season begins. In the meantime, you can see a preview of his update below:

Steve Rogers (First Avenger) Update:

Earth’s Mightiest Heroes
The cost of the power is decreased by three, activation of the power no longer ends the turn, and the power activates instantly instead of creating Countdown tiles. The individual effects remained the same as before.

Shield Bash
The power will create a Countdown tile that gives the player AP in the team’s strongest color when it activates. For every additional Team Cap member on the team, the player will receive additional AP in that color. The cost of the power has been increased by two and the damage has been lowered.

Coordinated Offensive
The base damage has been increased but the additional damage done per friendly Strike, Protect and Attack tile has been lowered. The power no longer destroys friendly tiles and destroys random AP from the enemy for each friendly Strike, Protect and Attack tile.

Steve Rogers (First Avenger) Level 450
Earth's Mightiest Heroes

Shield Bash

Coordinated Offensive

notamutant

Wow. This buff is huge. Blue still stinks, but yellow is now incredible. Red is now basically like 3 star Cap's red, but no ability to place the CD or overwrite other tiles. Will have to look at damage numbers for yellow again to verify how great he is now, but this should definitely push him up there to at least be as useful as IM.

smkspy

The devs must really hate mister fantastic.

notamutant

smkspy wrote:

The devs must really hate mister fantastic.

They can't let any 5 stars seem like they suck or people won't spend money on them. And they bring in a lot more money than 4 stars. So 5 stars get buff priority.

carrion_pigeons

"Also, we made some 5*s have the Team Cap affiliation."

Right?

smkspy

notamutant wrote:

smkspy wrote:

The devs must really hate mister fantastic.

They can't let any 5 stars seem like they suck or people won't spend money on them. And they bring in a lot more money than 4 stars. So 5 stars get buff priority.

Whatever it takes, bro. Whatever it takes.

fmftint

REALLY? This season's update is ONE 5 ?
This update will not effect 99.99999% of the playerbase

Ctenko

smkspy wrote:

The devs must really hate mister fantastic.

Everyone hates Reed. Everybody.

notamutant

2k damage per AP now in first turn, guaranteed, over previous no guarantee of 1,538 per AP. Around 33% buff on damage alone, ignoring the fact it is easier to get 10 AP and you don't have to end the turn or wait for CD to resolve. This may now be the single best move in the game. Well, Thanos probably still has that role with his black and green. Still, this is top tier.

smkspy

Ctenko wrote:

smkspy wrote:

The devs must really hate mister fantastic.

Everyone hates Reed. Everybody.

Sounds like the makings of a Fantastic sitcom lol.

RoboDuck

Is this the only character this cycle? If so, thanks for nothing. With the amount of 3s & 4s that need buffs, wasting time buffing a 5* is asinine.

ClydeFrog76

Jarvind

While I agree that leaving 4*s untouched when there are several in need of tuning is kinda lame, to be fair, 5* Cap was hot garbage before.

Punisher5784

While the rebalanced 5* Cap looks much better, this isn't helping a majority of your playerbase. The 5* players that have him likely still won't use him over their other 5*s, while the rest of us will never get covers for him until you solve the Classic token problem and make colorless covers possible.

Rebalanced 5*s should be accompanied with a rebalanced 4* or 3*, especially since the last 4* rebalance of Miles was a simple tweak and not a huge change like it was for Cho and Starlord. Mister Fantastic should had been rebalanced already.

bobby_2613

I get they want to change a 5 stars that needed it but honestly would it be so difficult to change another character with him. A 4 stars, a 3 stars even something that would benefit more people than only those who have a viable 5cap.

My 2 cents

Zappa

Yup, they're definitely listening
You'd think they could just roll out a bunch of changes simultaneously and just fix them as they go.

*Removed Misinformation*
-Brigby

Vhailorx

notamutant wrote:

2k damage per AP now in first turn, guaranteed, over previous no guarantee of 1,538 per AP. Around 33% buff on damage alone, ignoring the fact it is easier to get 10 AP and you don't have to end the turn or wait for CD to resolve. This may now be the single best move in the game. Well, Thanos probably still has that role with his black and green. Still, this is top tier.

I think this is an overstatement. The power is definitely a lot better. but 'a little bit of everything' powers tend not to be nearly as useful in this game a single purpose power that is generally cheaper and easier to fully leverage.

Vhailorx

Thanks for the update brigby! and thanks for the continued buffs demi!

This looks promising.

As I said in post above, yellow is much better.

Red seems a bit worse. It's noticeably more expensive at 11, but still doesn't do great damage (other 5*s can do 20k or more for 11 ap). The CD that generates ap is a bit hard to judge. If it goes off reliable, then it will be very useful. if not, then this power looks like his weak link (after being his best).

Blue is substantially better. The value of not destroying the special tiles is massive. blue now looks like what it was intended to be: a spammable power that do some significant damage with enough tiles on the board. But destroying 8 friendly tiles totally undercut that utility. This isn't a game ender, but will be a painful, hard to avoid irritant when fighting him.

Lack of 5* teammates, and the team mate restrictions of IM46 and 5*cap in general are just bad mechanics. team selection is one of the best features of this game. don't take it away from us with these teams. Ir at least make them less important. Im46's damage triples if you bring the right team.

Mr_Sinister

notamutant wrote:

Wow. This buff is huge. Blue still stinks, but yellow is now incredible. Red is now basically like 3 star Cap's red, but no ability to place the CD or overwrite other tiles. Will have to look at damage numbers for yellow again to verify how great he is now, but this should definitely push him up there to at least be as useful as IM.

How does blue stink? It's 7ap, scales up damage with special tiles and destroys AP. How is any of that bad?

Sluggo

I think I say this every month: no one got nerfed = a win in my book.

babinro

WOW!

It's hard to judge these changes on paper but I will say this is unquestionably a HUGE improvement.

Yellow was a super fun skill so I'm glad it the core of it remained. I think you handled this change perfectly as I'd rather have a cost reduction and removal of the lost turn over increased values within the skill.
Red is ALSO a fun change because he feels like good ol Cap again! Throw the shield, and gain AP to throw again (or do whatever else with the AP boost).
Blue was unplayable before and now its still a little rough but has some excellent potential.
I only wish every 5* character was given an affiliation one way or the other to make things a bit more accessible.

Now all we need is a change that actually lets people finish a character whose in classic packs.

Question: Does blue destroy 1 AP for EACH friendly strike/attack/protect?
For example: OML has 5 friendly strikes then Caps blue will destroy 5 AP from a randomly chosen enemy color and of course deal bonus 1225 x 5 + 3061 damage.