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

Crowl

Polares wrote:

Crowl wrote:

Good to see a character that clearly needs it get fixed, but why only a single character a season, especially when that one is a 5* that the vast majority of your playerbase will not have covered anyway, the aim should be for every season to update a 3*, a 4* and if needed a 5* as there are plenty of characters that need fixing not just one or two.

They clearly dont have the manpower needed for that. People think fixing these chars is free, but it is not. And we already have a ton of bugs in the game!

Nobody thinks it is free, but it is not going to be as labour-intensive as some of the other changes they are making not to mention that they could do some minor number tweaks for the ones that need improving but don't need a complete overhaul like that "bugfix" they gave 3* Thanos e.g. a slight health boost to the lowest hp characters in the 1-3* range would be a good indication that these reworks are not just about the 4* and 5* tiers.

firethorne

Mechahamster wrote:

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

Let me take a stab at it.

Change his Yellow by removing the need for a FF member to be on the team, and give a small heal and 2 ap in strongest colour when a friendly special tile gets matched by anyone.

Change his Black by dropping the cost to 5, the duration to 5 and fortifying it.

Change his Blue to give strike tiles instead of protect tiles for greater synergy with his black.

Pair him up with Nova and X-23 for lots of strike tile fun.

Yep. It isn't rocket science. Here's some more ideas:

Yellow - Make it a team heal. Have him be the 4* equivalent to KK's passive. A character that is able to keep themselves alive longer is only a big deal if they can do some real damage. Mr. F cannot.

Black - Just up the damage. You're telling me that Vision, a 3*, gets 1040 extra damage with his blue countdown, and Mr. F, a 4*, gets 812? Pretty easy to see why that one is broken.

Blue - I'm with Mechahamster. Throw a strike tile on that. Furthermore, you can go with more but weaker tiles, making it work more easily with the yellow.

He's bad. But not "a complete, back to the drawing board mess."

Mechahamster

firethorne wrote:

Mechahamster wrote:

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

Let me take a stab at it.

Change his Yellow by removing the need for a FF member to be on the team, and give a small heal and 2 ap in strongest colour when a friendly special tile gets matched by anyone.

Change his Black by dropping the cost to 5, the duration to 5 and fortifying it.

Change his Blue to give strike tiles instead of protect tiles for greater synergy with his black.

Pair him up with Nova and X-23 for lots of strike tile fun.

Yep. It isn't rocket science. Here's some more ideas:

Yellow - Make it a team heal. Have him be the 4* equivalent to KK's passive. A character that is able to keep themselves alive longer is only a big deal if they can do some real damage. Mr. F cannot.

Black - Just up the damage. You're telling me that Vision, a 3*, gets 1040 extra damage with his blue countdown, and Mr. F, a 4*, gets 812? Pretty easy to see why that one is broken.

Blue - I'm with Mechahamster. Throw a strike tile on that. Furthermore, you can go with more but weaker tiles, making it work more easily with the yellow.

He's bad. But not "a complete, back to the drawing board mess."

I was being conservative and only trying to make him useful. You can absolutely go overboard and make him first choice in the support role by upping the numbers
3 300 strike tiles + 3 turn stun on blue , 1500 extra match damage on black and 3K team heal on yellow please.

Crowl

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

I don't think he is as broken as that, you could keep a lot of his existing stuff as long as it was priced accordingly.

I'd make his black a passive, tweak the numbers if it proves too powerful like that.

His blue is horribly overpriced or lacking in secondary functionality (didn't iceman come out right after mr F with a vastly superior and cheaper one?), maybe roll the healing from yellow into it or make him spawn a lot more special tiles to trigger the yellow more easily.

If you did the former then he would need a new yellow and they should consider something more offensive in nature, an attack that was graphically similar to that of KK with bonus damage based on the number of FF team members fighting alongside him.

pheregas

What if you made his yellow a group heal and add a passive that grants increased abilities for FF members (like Black Bolt)? That way affiliations are still used and encourages team dynamics.

I'd also argue that his blue should drop strike, shield, and attack tiles. He's flexible that way....

JFisch

Really, the challenge to Mr. F is you still need to capture some element of the character. How do you...

• Convey his ability to change size a shape.
• Convey his mechanical and scientific genuis.
• Convey the "mad scientist" underpinning he has.
• Convey him as 100% dedicated to his family.

Nova is an (objectively) good character, but his powers also convey the feeling of a character called "The Human Rocket."

I like the idea of having a power with a Fantastic Four rider, but what he has right now isn't strong enough. A team-dependent power should be good enough to stand on its own and have the team piece be icing on the cake.

I'm not upset by the damage amount of his black currently, but I think it's a big mistake not to have it explode for tile destruction and big damage when the countdown expires. Cobble together an unstable invention out of spare parts on hand, work hard to keep it running and together, but eventually it gets out of control and just blows up.

ZeiramMR

firethorne wrote:

Mechahamster wrote:

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

Let me take a stab at it.

Change his Yellow by removing the need for a FF member to be on the team, and give a small heal and 2 ap in strongest colour when a friendly special tile gets matched by anyone.

Change his Black by dropping the cost to 5, the duration to 5 and fortifying it.

Change his Blue to give strike tiles instead of protect tiles for greater synergy with his black.

Pair him up with Nova and X-23 for lots of strike tile fun.

Yep. It isn't rocket science. Here's some more ideas:

Yellow - Make it a team heal. Have him be the 4* equivalent to KK's passive. A character that is able to keep themselves alive longer is only a big deal if they can do some real damage. Mr. F cannot.

Black - Just up the damage. You're telling me that Vision, a 3*, gets 1040 extra damage with his blue countdown, and Mr. F, a 4*, gets 812? Pretty easy to see why that one is broken.

Blue - I'm with Mechahamster. Throw a strike tile on that. Furthermore, you can go with more but weaker tiles, making it work more easily with the yellow.

He's bad. But not "a complete, back to the drawing board mess."

I'd actually call Reed and Vision about equal on boosted damage once the tile is out. Mr. F generates the bonus damage for Red/Green/Yellow regardless of whose symbol is on the tile for most damage, while Vision only gets it when he is the strongest color. That puts a reduction to Vision's effectiveness except in the cases of your other characters being weaker or KOed.

That isn't to say there are not other trade-offs/weaknesses and more importantly, the 4* version should be higher, not equal, in my estimation.

mega ghost

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

I made the following suggestions back in November (slightly edited here):

Mr. Fantastic- Largely pointless as he is. He really should be an excellent stunner, up there with Iceman. His stun should be powerful but also come at personal cost, including self-damage when related countdown tiles are matched, and an increase in personal AP cost when an enemy is stunned, since his stun involves him using his own body.

His should become a passive, automatically stunning the enemy in front for x number of turns. Every time it's fired three blue countdowns should be generated, in which this passive can't fire again until the countdowns have been resolved or matched (at lower cover levels the countdown number will notably exceed the number of turns stunned, i.e. 4 to 1. This could become 3 to 2, or some other variation. I think some play testing would be needed to dial it in properly.)

If you match or destroy a countdown yourself, a blue strike tile is generated. If the enemy matches a countdown, Mr. Fantastic receives a set amount of (not insignificant) damage for each blue countdown on the board. While an enemy is stunned, Mr. F's AP costs increase.

Since this auto-stun would be overpowered with only one enemy, when only one enemy remains the power should change to a different passive that does not stun, but adds AP cost to all enemy abilities.

His should drop the "for each other Fantastic Four member on the team" stipulation. Or, that can exist as bonus AP, but the default should be 1 AP if you have no Fantastic Four team members. The AP colors should diversify with higher levels, and the matching of special tiles should be modified to:

Heal if an enemy matches a friendly special tile of any color except blue (since matching the blue countdowns would be causing Mr. F damage.)

His needs better damage and a lower AP cost.

smkspy

Thread about buff to a largely rostered but lowly covered 5 star, becomes a thread about buffing a largely rostered largely covered 4 star.

I've got 5 covers for Cap, but even with buff he is still only gonna be used for easy nodes (and I liked the old version too) but Reed is at 13 sitting at level 100. He was my first max cover 4 and I've probably sold 5 or 6 covers for him since that.

The stop complaining crowd loves to come in and sunshine pump whatever they can, but people certainly have a reason to question why another buff that primarily helps the 1% and leaves out the yet again the remainder is pushed out when game moral is pretty **** low right now.

mega ghost

I understand the dismay as I too am experiencing it, but you have to think about the economy of the game as well. I'm sure that this change benefits their top spenders (in my limited experience with apps and this sort of digital marketplace, you have your extremely high spenders and your extremely casual spenders, and not always something in between, which means a relatively small population is keeping you afloat, and they have to be tended to.) For the rest of us, 5* Cap is an aspirational character. If something is to be aspirational, then you have to actually want to work towards it. In that light, a broken or weak 5* character is just unacceptable.

Horrorshow

I don't see Mr. F as anything more than a support hero, which in and of itself isn't a bad thing. His black could definitely use a kick in the bunshole for more damage, but his yellow and blue aren't bad. If you look at the trends for the new characters, they all have a detriment to their powers (in some form). The only detriment to Mr. F is that he's not a very offensively geared character. Just surround him with tanks and he actually works really well (Phoenix, Rulk, Chulk, 4Clops).

spectator

The problem is he is a true healer making him the perfect tank. And this unfortunately brings up another of his problems which is his black triggers on mainly off colours he doesn't tank

ZootSax

Brigby, I have an on-topic and an off-topic question on this:

On topic: Will the change to Captain America's yellow affect how he functions in the Civil War and Boss Rush events?

Off topic: Will any 3* characters have their 4* champion rewards adjusted for this season?

In any case, as others have said, thanks for the update.

Vhailorx

ZootSax wrote:

Brigby, I have an on-topic and an off-topic question on this:

On topic: Will the change to Captain America's yellow affect how he functions in the Civil War and Boss Rush events?

Off topic: Will any 3* characters have their 4* champion rewards adjusted for this season?

In any case, as others have said, thanks for the update.

Boss cap from civil war already has a different powerset from 5* cap. So they could leave him as is without trouble.

TLCstormz

Y'all are ONLY fixing ONE CHARACTER that MOST OF THE POPULATION does not even have........and that's the ONLY character for entire month?????

Lord.

Heartburn

revskip wrote:

Bonny2712 wrote:

A hint for future updates: If you update a 5-Star-Character, please update also a 3-Star-Character (like Sentry)....

Strongly disagree. I like the one character per season. Doing too many at once has the potential to spread the devs thin and every update has unexpected consequences, see the last 4 patches if you don't believe me.

Also really like the changes to 5Steve. He's my most covered 5* and now I don't have to lament that fact.

lets not get crazy here i can adjust a bad character in 5 to 10 min, rework completely in a few hours, lets not pretend this game is perfectly balanced... come on look at the "testing" they do with new releases.


Lets try Psylock. add 375 to her red keep the strike tile limit and damage but make it cost 5 red, Blue "Know your secrets" split it into 3x 2 turn count down tiles that steal 5(3 at 3, 4 at 4) from the enemies most and deal 400( 200 at 3, 300 at 4) damage when they go off, black add 400 damage and split the attack tile into two totaling 300. a potent attacker that needs to be taken care of first with her low hp, pair her with a protector.

Heartburn

Mechahamster wrote:

Chronicler wrote:

Anyway, maybe the problem is no one knows how to fix him yet. Seriously, he's a complete, back to the drawing board mess. It's not like turning a dial a little, it's like designing a completely new character with an extra set of constraints out of the gate.

Let me take a stab at it.

Change his Yellow by removing the need for a FF member to be on the team, and give a small heal and 2 ap in strongest colour when a friendly special tile gets matched by anyone.

Change his Black by dropping the cost to 5, the duration to 5 and fortifying it.

Change his Blue to give strike tiles instead of protect tiles for greater synergy with his black.

Pair him up with Nova and X-23 for lots of strike tile fun.

nice , i would make his black cost 8 make him move to the front for the duration and have it spit out an attack, protect and strike tile while also destroying 6 random tiles or how many charges is on it maybe having lvl 5 do a set amount of damage per charges left, but change yellow to " Field testing" keep the large heal but make the 2 ap in a random color when a friendly tile is destroyed but only works when he is in front. blue puts him in front while the enemy is stunned, but increase the stun duration by one at all levels keep them protect tiles but add a strike tile for every level 3 and above

Heartburn

Mitchjewitz wrote:

First thank you devs for rebalancing a clearly broken character. Ever since 5Cap came out (almost a year ago) everyone has been asking for a rebalance. So it comes and then people complain that he is the only change. D3 never promised to change more than one and even change anyone at all per season. Mr. Fantastic is no where near top tier but he isn't useless. And there haven't been any nerfs yet. Stop complaining and be grateful.

i suppose asking for character not to suck is too much too ask for the almighty devs, we should be grateful for the privilege of playing this delicately balanced masterwork of a game. no? guess i should be happy for no nerfs then. gee whiz it only took them almost a year to fix a underpowered top tier whale zone character.

Mechahamster

Heartburn wrote:

nice , i would make his black cost 8 make him move to the front for the duration and have it spit out an attack, protect and strike tile while also destroying 6 random tiles or how many charges is on it maybe having lvl 5 do a set amount of damage per charges left, but change yellow to " Field testing" keep the large heal but make the 2 ap in a random color when a friendly tile is destroyed but only works when he is in front. blue puts him in front while the enemy is stunned, but increase the stun duration by one at all levels keep them protect tiles but add a strike tile for every level 3 and above

Mister F doesn't really feel like a tank though. It makes sense for him to improve the damage others do (with a gadget). He should be a support character. Doesn't kill himself, makes it a lot easier for others to kill. Right now he's lacking in that department, but he can be made better simply by improving what he already does. Passive healing, stunning, draining AP and high match damage are things that are appreciated by every player. He just does it so underwhelmingly now.

firethorne

Mechahamster wrote:

Heartburn wrote:

nice , i would make his black cost 8 make him move to the front for the duration and have it spit out an attack, protect and strike tile while also destroying 6 random tiles or how many charges is on it maybe having lvl 5 do a set amount of damage per charges left, but change yellow to " Field testing" keep the large heal but make the 2 ap in a random color when a friendly tile is destroyed but only works when he is in front. blue puts him in front while the enemy is stunned, but increase the stun duration by one at all levels keep them protect tiles but add a strike tile for every level 3 and above

Mister F doesn't really feel like a tank though. It makes sense for him to improve the damage others do (with a gadget). He should be a support character. Doesn't kill himself, makes it a lot easier for others to kill. Right now he's lacking in that department, but he can be made better simply by improving what he already does. Passive healing, stunning, draining AP and high match damage are things that are appreciated by every player. He just does it so underwhelmingly now.

Which is also why his self heal is a bit weird. If you're matching the colors his black is boosting, he isn't in front getting hit, so his heal is irrelevant. If he is in front taking damage and healing himself, you aren't getting any benefit from the damage booster, so that is irrelevant. He doesn't synergize well with himself. He could be either a self healing damage dealer, or a team support, but right now he's this odd mix of half of each that doesn't make sense.

That's why I say his heal could be toned down a tad and made into a team heal. That way he'd truly a support character, and not a self-healing tank that doesn't do any damage on the colors he tanks.

And of course, either way, black needs a better boost to damage. Vision, a 3*, gets a better booster. For a 4*, his is unacceptably low.