Are Passives Getting Out of Control?

Buret0

Ever since the 5*s were released, most of the damage dealt in a match went from activating an ability to doing match damage with strike tiles.

The most powerful ability in the game right now is probably Black Bolt's passive. Medusa's active purple made enemy strike tiles turn on them to do incredible damage. 4* Marvel's took that one step further by removing the requirement to have enemy special tiles on the board. Her back-splash damage whenever the opposing team matches their strongest color is incredibly powerful. In the PvPs where Jean Grey and Switch were boosted, I was trolling all over the place with my Marvel/Jean Grey combos. Every time Switch's CD tile popped, it was dealing 9000 team damage, full team stunning for two turns, draining all (or almost all) of the enemy purple AP gained, and giving me 4 more Purple AP to work with.

Here's what I was able to do with 4Marvel, Blade, and Wasp:





Are these record breaking, or do I need to boost them a bit more?

Jarvind

Honestly, I'm actually OK with this. It makes the game much more about board control and manipulation than "gather AP as fast as possible for maximum pew pews!" It makes it feel more puzzley and less like a shooter that happens to involve moving tiles around. Also, prior to 5*s, match damage without strikes was borderline negligible which always felt silly to me.

acescracked

So D3 is passive aggressive?

Azoth658

Passives are great fun when they feel slightly over powered but aren't in the grand scheme of things such as 4cage his defense tiles are awesome especially when you have starlord and wasp causing buffs and changing them to strike tiles. Puzzly and clever ways to make the most of them.

That being said d3 need to be careful because you can create carol danvers who is completely broken. Her active abilities are good and cheap but her passive literally suffocates the enemies health points whilst they are trying to get momentum. Pair her with oml and Peggy and suddenly she's pretty much hidden from enemy attacks and the enemy struggle to fire any powerful attacks to stop you. Couple that with Peggy's blue stunning, three countdowns worth of buffing strike tiles and it's almost unstoppable.

So keep bringing us passives but think about how they can be utterly abused. Also think about how you can fix the early four stars to bring them in line with the rest of this new crazy tier of four stars. (Reed cough cough actually REED PLEASE FIX HIM)

Xzasxz

Jarvind wrote:

Honestly, I'm actually OK with this. It makes the game much more about board control and manipulation than "gather AP as fast as possible for maximum pew pews!" It makes it feel more puzzley ...

Good joke. It has nothing to do with "board control", "manipulation", "puzzle" etc. It's pure RNG and PASSIVES do the job. Carol Danvers, as it is, is completely insane. And with new characters we have more and more crazy abilities introduced. Where is it leading to?
I know, it is good for bussiness. Makes people spend money to get newly introduced characters as high as possible, ASAP.

Ruinate

I've cried about this a lot on Line. The amount of passive damage coming out recently is disgusting and bad for the health of the game imo. Quite healthy for the pockets of game makers, I'm sure. It's like they don't even attempt to balance anymore or look at the bigger picture. This game is supposedly going to last another 10 years? At this rate? Yeah, let's faceroll random matches and passive damage our way to victory without firing a single power. Good and complex game you got going here, devs.

Calnexin

Ruinate wrote:

I've cried about this a lot on Line. The amount of passive damage coming out recently is disgusting and bad for the health of the game imo. Quite healthy for the pockets of game makers, I'm sure.

Dev "Spending on healthpacks have tanked"
Suit "Add more unavoidable damage!"
Dev "What kind?"
Suit "All of it! Passive damage. Self damage. Team damage. DAMAGE DAMAGE DAMAGE!"

xcience

no this is fine. there are plenty of abilities that steal or destroy special tiles. maybe atm they are going to be stronger in pve but still most would favor speed rather than stalling out the game just to see big numbers to boost their mpq ego

passive skills keep characters valuable and useful way after their power drops. I think a good solution to this is situational passives like wasp. for instance you need to have ap banked for the passive to go off.

Twysta

Can I even say that here?

UNC_Samurai

Aren't we overreacting just a little?

RoboDuck

Impressive you were able to buff them that high. My Champed Carol hasn't been able to buff anything beyond 5Kish. The match is over before I can get it higher.

Jarvind

Xzasxz wrote:

Jarvind wrote:

Honestly, I'm actually OK with this. It makes the game much more about board control and manipulation than "gather AP as fast as possible for maximum pew pews!" It makes it feel more puzzley ...

Good joke. It has nothing to do with "board control", "manipulation", "puzzle" etc. It's pure RNG and PASSIVES do the job. Carol Danvers, as it is, is completely insane. And with new characters we have more and more crazy abilities introduced. Where is it leading to?
I know, it is good for bussiness. Makes people spend money to get newly introduced characters as high as possible, ASAP.

Do you know what RNG is? Roulette is pure RNG. That's not this. I'll use your example of Carol Danvers.

Yes, her passive is extremely strong. However, first, you'll need to pair her with somebody that makes countdowns to make it really shine. Yes, she has her own, but it's not super cheap and it's a long timer, and if you use her yellow active to set it off, you won't get maximum mileage out of it. So that's a tactical decision.

You also need to choose a good place to put the tile. Granted, at 5 covers it fortifies so it's unlikely that it will be matched away, but on a black-heavy board this will still be an important decision.

On the flip side, if I'm fighting her, I can bring Jean Grey or Invisible Woman (or both) to completely shut down her black and yellow while still giving me plenty of damage output. Yes, that leaves her green passive, but our strongest colors won't match unless my third is OML, and if she's just getting black when I match purple (my strongest would be Jean in this example) then I can continue to shut down her CDs when they come out. Just offhand as another possible counter, I could bring Iron Fist and flood the board with black to match it away.

Yes, she's an extremely strong character, but no more so than other frontliners like Peggy Carter or Hulkbuster. Please think next time before you spout off a condescending gripe you heard somebody else say on an unrelated topic.

Xzasxz

Jarvind wrote:

Please think next time before you spout off a condescending gripe you heard somebody else say on an unrelated topic.

Do You know what RNG is? same question to You. One thing You are right, this is not RNG, but PRNG, and IMO broken PRNG as a matter of fact. With time this game has less and less to do with "puzzle". That' sad truth. Live with Your illusions, it's up to You.

BigRussian

Those are amazing buffs, and I missed out on getting any carol covers when she released.. Pretty competitive it was.

Good job with those buffs, op.

veny

Thats because 4* Ms Marvel is broken... with covers like 3* Blade, Loki, Wasp, Red Hulk etc. she makes ultimate combo.
I believe her passive should work ONLY for tiles reduced with yellow active.

Tatercat

I just posted about this Wasp/3* Blade/4* Carol team over on the Wasp character thread as I tried it out today too once I got my Wasp champed this morning. My Carol was only lvl 70 (boosted to 145 this week) at 3/3/3 so I only got numbers as high as 8554 on a single special tile, not as high as what the OP saw. It was a fun and effective team (if slow), but it’s not bullet proof.

It needs an all non-turn active goon team to be reliably effective against. Any enemy that can match tiles, or cause any board shake, can get rid of those special tiles and countdown, sometimes in hurry. Ultron Sentries, Juggernaut, Rags, they can all upend that strategy simply by being their usual frustrating selves. And god help if you if Loki gets off Trickery when you’ve got one of those super buffed protect or strike tiles out there, depending on the timing. (His black may become a very popular team up request because of Carol though).

I know that team was just meant as an example of a larger problem of passives in the game but I don’t think they’re overpowered in every situation yet. Some situations, of course, but not all. Maybe my mind will change as my Carol grows, but so far every passive recently seems to have its own caveats in some way.

OneLastGambit

Are passives out of control? Nope.

So the devs create a couple of passives which do good damage (but require good team composition and play to activate and use well) and people say they're out of control.

Let's not be silly. It's a strategy like any other. You make it sound like passives are instant win. I can't throw strange Carol and cage together and win without effort...in fact I'd debate whether or not I'd win at all.

However if I think about who will pair with my chosen passive to help me win then hey...actually that required a bit of planning and therefore the application of knowledge. Not RNG.

No offense OP and subsequent supporters but I think you're wrong on this, it's just my opinion and you're entitled to yours but it comes across like you just had a bad match against one of the said passive monsters, but the dust and got annoyed about it. Happens to us all and happens for us all, we just pay more attention to it when it's against us.

Also... I've seen px boost tiles to levels just like this...nobody moaning that he's OP even though it's also a passive.

Polares

I don't think passives in general are out of control.

There are some considerations that need to be made here though. First, I think Devs didn't think though the interactions that can be made with Carol's yellow passive. The passive is in general alright, it works great with Peggy or Starlord, but if you use it with countdown powers that go off every turn and come back then the ability can be a bit OP (Wasp and HT are probably the main offenders here). I don't think Devs expected this combo would work that well, maybe it is even a bug! (when I read 'expire' the first time in the power description I thought that neither Wasp or HT countdown would work). But even after saying all these, I am not that alarmed because Wasp is useless otherwise, so at least this is a case where she becomes useful, and you can still deal with these tiles easily (Medusa, Antman, Elektra for example). In the end It is more a PvE combo, and requires some time to work, so is not that meta defining, if it was super fast it would probably be different (first you need 9 blue, then a strike, and then you start to buff, a bit every turn).

Then there is another passive that it is a bit OP, 3 Strange's yellow . 5 Strange yellow was nerfed before he was released, but 3 Strange yellow was not. Both should have been nerfed, or none, but nerfing one and not the other was a mistake.

Starlord passive is also great but I don't think it breaks anything. 5 Thanos is also really good but it damages your team, so it has a cost, but I still need to see how great is this one before I can comment on how good/OP it is.