*** Magneto (Classic) ***

Dayv

SunCrusher wrote:

... Wait a minute. Does this mean Mags won't be tanking/hitting hard in his previous color matches matches anymore, either, and will be stronger in the new colors to reflect the color swaps? Or is it only the abilities themselves that change and not the color damage per match strengths?

Magneto has always done yellow damage instead of purple. This change brings his powers in line with his match damage.

SunCrusher

DayvBang wrote:

SunCrusher wrote:

... Wait a minute. Does this mean Mags won't be tanking/hitting hard in his previous color matches matches anymore, either, and will be stronger in the new colors to reflect the color swaps? Or is it only the abilities themselves that change and not the color damage per match strengths?

Magneto has always done yellow damage instead of purple. This change brings his powers in line with his match damage.

Okay, that was a stupid moment for me to have forgotten. Been playing too much OBW lately and seeing Purple everywhere. Thanks for reminding me. I was thinking about Daken's changes and the tile strength changes and automatically thought that Mags' would have to be swapped out, too, given his palette swap.

Unknown

I don't understand why his purple needed a nerf?

Thor does almost 9K damage total at max, BP does even more. Why was it an issue that C.Mags can theoretically deal +8K damage to a single target. This is my only issue with these changes.

Nellyson

So why didn't they change his match damage to purple??? Seriously, why is it the abilities that have to change colors instead of the match colors? Would love to have red/yellow/purple instead. But red/blue/purple was still great too.

Phaserhawk

This isn't bad, it is what he was suppose to be. Old blue was never meant to create infinite turns it was as the AI uses him for to create cheap annoying def tiles and it does it so much better if you max it you run a 9/64 chance if destroying a tile you wanted gone. He still has multiple builds as well 3/5/5 offensive. 5/5/3 defensive etc. for me I like 5 yellow but I don't see me using it over other yellows. Old purple now blue does more dmg than a maxed purple at 7 swaps, after 7 old purple was better. To me I think 5 blue is a no-brained the question is red vs yelliw

Unknown

Cmags has always been Red/Blue/Yellow match damage. They matched his powers to his colors instead of changing his colors to his powers.

carrion_pigeons

The new red is not Storm's old red. It does not generate AP. It's board shakeup and TU denial, but no AP except from cascades.

turul

New powers are fine but color changes should be reset.
New blue is broken because we need to clear blue from the board to fire a blue-dependant ability, which lowerd avarage damage made...
Also, no change in colors does let us have a good purple skill hero and hero color combos remain.

However color shift lets us play some new combos...

Pylgrim

Milkrain wrote:

I don't understand why his purple needed a nerf?

Thor does almost 9K damage total at max, BP does even more. Why was it an issue that C.Mags can theoretically deal +8K damage to a single target. This is my only issue with these changes.

It costed 10 AP. Moreover, Call The Storm and Rage of The Panther are only lethal if the game has gone for long and your heroes are dying. Translocation could remove a full health hero in the early game. If that hero was your offensive character, you basically lost the game right there.

Source: happened to me too many times to count.

NorthernPolarity

DayvBang wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

Translocation was the only active purple ability that is generally good on all teams on offense (bird strike sucks, fury isn't available to everyone, deadpool is expensive, gsbw/daredevil are unplayable in PvE), so now we're left with a character with a good blue, okay red, and average to below average yellow.

I agree with a lot of this, but GSBW is quite playable in PvE.

Whoops, meant pvp. Gsbw is pretty good in pve.

Unknown

Ummmm
I'm kinda looking forward to dropping 9 yellow defense tiles down.
Would be nice if there were a bunch of yellows and be able to generate 24.
Double thor yellowwwww.... winnnnn....

Sadly the endless blue cmag era will come to an end. ;__;

Unknown

IceIX wrote:

Since each of these changes are a little long and the conversation for each character is relatively self contained, I'm making a thread for each character containing the changes and reasoning for that character. Yes, this'll make the stickies area a little big for a bit until they go Live. And yes, this probably should be in Character Discussion, but since it's Patch Note related, it's staying here.


*** Magneto (Classic) ***

Magneto is pretty well one of the most overpowered characters in current meta. His Magnetic Translocation can do massive damage, his Magnetic Field can be fired off pretty much infinitely at higher levels, and his Magnetized Projectile is a cheap board shaker that also does massive damage with accompanying Strike tiles on the board. He's supposed to be a powerful mutant, but Magneto in his current form could go up against the whole of the X-Men, and with a couple Starting AP Boosts, demolish them before they got a turn. He's a bit much. There's also the weirdness in having his abilities not match hit color strengths. So let's fix that while we're at it.

Magnetic Field -> Coercive Field

Magnetic Field is an infinite AP generator as long as you have something to shake up the board to introduce some new Blue tiles. Even at base level there's still a darned good chance at getting at least 5 AP of the 9 spent back. Then you also generate a Critical tile and probably a cascade for some extra damage. An easy fix isn't really in the cards without pretty well destroying the ability. Just taking away the AP reductions isn't tenable, as grabbing 12-15 AP makes this just as powerful as before. Reducing it to one tile placement or making the tiles only placeable on Blue turns the ability from awesome to horrible in one fell swoop. After analyzing how the ability works and knowing that our original intent is to make this a strong shield, we decided to redesign it a bit. The new version of the ability moves away from creating new colors of tiles. Immediately it's no longer an AP generator. But that alone, as stated above, makes it pretty underpowered. So we decided to raise the number of tiles it creates but offset that by placing the tiles randomly. At max level the ability provides a relatively cheap and heavy decrease in incoming damage with 477 points of protection put out. And at the same time, it can also overtake enemy tiles at it levels, so a Storm (Mohawk) Hailstorm can be heavily blunted with a single cast of Magneto's powers. Overall, this power change allows the ability to match the original concept of a strong defensive ability that can decisively change the flow of combat when used. It may not be an infinite combo any more, but it's still powerful in its own right.

Old

Magnetic Field - Blue 9 AP
Magneto summons an electromagnetic shield, turning 2 chosen tiles into Blue Protect tiles, each with a strength of 9.
New

Coercive Field - Yellow 9 AP
The air crackles as Magneto creates a force field of magnetic energy to protect his allies. Converts 6 random basic color tiles into strength 11 Protect tiles.


Magnetized Projectile -> Polarizing Force

Much like Magnetic Field, the low cost and board shake up that this ability offered was just too much. Combine that with its incredible scalability with Strike tiles and this ability was an extremely low cost nightmare. So it needed to go back to the drawing board. We needed a way of keeping the soul of the ability intact while not making it uber destructive on its own. With Team-Up AP having entered the game, we saw an opportunity to use that with his powers in a very Magneto-esque way. He's a past master at making sure that his opponents can't gang up on him or his allies. So instead of destroying random tiles, instead he blows up all the AP tiles on the board. This keeps the board shift flavor of the old version and also deprives the opponent of what can be very powerful AP matches. At the same time, we still want the ability to be damaging. The old version of this did so very randomly, with lots of low cost cheap pings at the board to cause cascades and deal a little damage in the process. This then exacerbated itself by pairing well with Strike tiles. So to fix this, we flipped the destruction to a larger number of tiles for a larger expenditure in AP. This still means that with Strike tiles out, it'll do a hefty amount of damage, but that damage won't be centralized there. On an average board Magneto will be blowing up around 9 AP tiles per use, so a single blast of 8 AP will shake up the board heavily and knock around the enemy for 2400-ish damage plus assorted cascades.

Old

Magnetized Projectile - Red 6 AP
Magneto propels magnetized projectiles at his enemies destroying 5 random tiles and dealing an extra 21 damage.
New

Polarizing Force - Red 8 AP
Magnet hurls a massive metal object towards the heart of the enemy team, landing with tremendous force and causing them to scatter. Destroys all Team-Up tiles, dealing 27 damage per tile. Does not generate AP.


Magnetic Translocation -> Magnetized Projectiles

Magnetic Translocation worked pretty well on its own but scaled just a bit too high. And worse than that, 13 tiles swaps almost never happened so that power generally never got worked out. So while we were looking at the rest of the abilities, we figured we may as well give this one a once over. First off, we flipped this ability to Blue from Purple as Blue makes more sense for a board ability, and it keeps with Magneto's color strengths. Then we reworked the damage scaling so that it does more damage out the outset and tops off a little lower than the mass destruction it could cause before. It still does a quite hefty chunk of damage at 4991 for 7 swaps, which it'll do in most cases with an average board.

Old

Magnetic Translocation - Purple 10 AP
Exploiting metals buried in the earth, Magneto lifts and moves huge sections of the battlefield, dropping them violently. Swaps up to 5 random Blue tiles with Red tiles. Does 38 damage for each swap.
New

Magnetized Projectiles - Blue 10 AP
Magneto turns metallic objects into deadly projectiles, causing devastation and chaos. Swaps up to 5 random Blue tiles with Red tiles. Does 93 damage for each swap.


Changes in full:
*** Magneto (Classic) ***

- Altered abilities for better balance Old

Magnetic Field - Blue 9 AP
Magneto summons an electromagnetic shield, turning 2 chosen tiles into Blue Protect tiles, each with a strength of 9.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 3: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 4: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 5: Costs 1 AP less.
Max Level: Damage reduced by 59 per Protect tile
New

Coercive Field - Yellow 9 AP
The air crackles as Magneto creates a force field of magnetic energy to protect his allies. Converts 6 random basic color tiles into strength 11 Protect tiles.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Can convert enemy Protect, Strike and Attack tiles.
Level 3: Converts 8 tiles.
Level 4: Converts 9 tiles.
Level 5: Creates strength 17 Protect tiles and can now also convert enemy Countdown tiles.
Max Level: Creates 9 Strength 53 Protect tiles

Old

Magnetized Projectile - Red 6 AP
Magneto propels magnetized projectiles at his enemies destroying 5 random tiles and dealing an extra 21 damage.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 3: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 4: Costs 1 AP less.
Level 5: Costs 1 AP less.
Max Level: 133 extra damage
New

Polarizing Force - Red 8 AP
Magnet hurls a massive metal object towards the heart of the enemy team, landing with tremendous force and causing them to scatter. Destroys all Team-Up tiles, dealing 27 damage per tile. Does not generate AP.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Deals 43 damage per tile.
Level 3: Deals 49 damage per tile.
Level 4: Deals 59 damage per tile.
Level 5: Deals 81 damage per tile.
Max Level: 261 damage per tile

Old

Magnetic Translocation - Purple 10 AP
Exploiting metals buried in the earth, Magneto lifts and moves huge sections of the battlefield, dropping them violently. Swaps up to 5 random Blue tiles with Red tiles. Does 38 damage for each swap.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Swaps up to 6 tiles.
Level 3: Swaps up to 7 tiles. Max damage 457 per swap.
Level 4: Swaps up to 9 tiles. Max damage 546 per swap.
Level 5: Swaps up to 13 tiles. Max damage 636 per swap.
New

Magnetized Projectiles - Blue 10 AP
Magneto turns metallic objects into deadly projectiles, causing devastation and chaos. Swaps up to 5 random Blue tiles with Red tiles. Does 93 damage for each swap.
Level Upgrades
Level 2: Does 126 damage for each swap.
Level 3: Swaps up to 6 tiles.
Level 4: Does 169 damage for each swap.
Level 5: Swaps up to 7 random tiles and does 224 damage for each swap.
Max Level: 713 damage per swap. Max damage of 4991.

So.... My 5 blue is going to change to 5 yellow
And My 1 purple is going to change to 1 blue

If so, that's total **** and would totally screw me over.

Why not just change what his blue does (which you did) instead of swapping colors and then giving him a blue power anyway?

Unknown

sorcered wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

sorcered wrote:

Nobody used CMags for his purple, and his red was decent exactly due to his low AP cost. Now there are at least six 3* characters with better red powers (Punisher, Thor, Wolverine, Deadpool, Torch, Sentry) and three 3* heroes with better purple powers (Daken, Grey Widow, Falcon). Yup, I'd say they killed Magneto. R.I.P.

The beginning of many "the sky is falling" posts from the hoards of patchneto users. His purple was one of the main sources of damage in Punisher or Torch/C. Mags/Hood, and was the best purple ability in the game. You also can't compare Daken's purple (which is a passive that depends on green matches) to C. Mag's active purple ability that nukes an enemy character. Widow is somewhat comparable but unplayable in PvP, and Falcon's purple is easily a lot worse than C. Mags purple. Again, this changes him from the god tier, wrecks every single character on offense to a balanced, middle of the road support character. If that's your definition of "killing" a character, then sure, C. Mags is dead, but the game is healthier because of it. It's not like he was nerfed like Spidey/Rags to bottom tier.

Who's using second rate heroes like Punisher or Human Torch when we still have Thor, Sentry, Daken etc? In a world where AlL heroes are second rate, yes, maybe CMags will be sometimes useful. Until then, though, there's absolutely no reason to dust him off, if you can play a better hero instead, of which are many.

People like me who can't progress and/or play casually.

I use punisher cuz he's one of the few 3* I have maxed or with 11-13 covers. I have a very low level lazy Thor & sentry and I don't think I have a lazy daken. I'm on day 303 I think.

HailMary

MikeHock wrote:

If so, that's total **** and would totally screw me over.

Why not just change what his blue does (which you did) instead of swapping colors and then giving him a blue power anyway?

It actually makes sense, because it keeps cover counts consistent with what each ability actually does. That seems pretty obvious.

dr tinykittylove

I only got cmags usable at L102 a couple weeks ago, when I pulled two covers in two days, and half that time he was at L89 because of iso shortage. It was fun to try him out, since I expected him to be nerfed before I ever had enough covers.

That said, his new powers are not completely terrible like say Loki's. (Mind, I say this as someone who uses IM40 a lot.)

What I said in the original Patch60 thread and wanted to note again here is:

1. It makes no sense to change his colours to match his match strengths rather than change his match strengths to his colours. Everyone else was changed the other way around. SEE: GSBW and Daken.

2. The board control colours is, excuse me, BULL(seye). Loki shuffles the board the same way with purple. MNMags and GSBW change selected tile colours with purple. For damaging abilities, there's Deadpool's whales. There is nothing incongruent with purple as either a board control or damage colour.

3. Are we suddenly suffering from an overload of purple skills? Does every tinykitty new character have an active purple? - wait, that's green. Didn't someone do a count of active abilities in the various colours?

Please, please keep him purple. It matches his cape and spandex better.

honestly it's really the illogical explanation that horks me off. It makes no sense. IT MAKES NO TINYKITTY SENSE. I can't stand the stupidity of the explanation. If you say something sensible like oh we're switching all the colours around for lulz, loki will now be red/blue/tuap and marvel will now be purple/blue/green, then fine, whatever. DON'T SAY DUMB THINGS.

OnesOwnGrief

Best thing about the change, Mags can finally go back to the rewards and PvP rotation. More people will be able to earn him and not have to hope for lucky pulls.

SunCrusher

OnesOwnGrief wrote:

Best thing about the change, Mags can finally go back to the rewards and PvP rotation. More people will be able to earn him and not have to hope for lucky pulls.

Is this confirmed or are you just hoping this will be the case?

It seems like Heroic tokens in replacement of actual covers has been the rage and will continue to be the rage.

'Lucky pulls' increases cover sales because people who really REALLY want the covers and who have bad luck just might cave in to either spend the HP on the covers or spend the HP to pull covers.

simonsez

If his new yellow actually prioritized enemy special tiles, rather than be just random, people might actually want to use him. As it is, I don't see where he fits. His skills are just slightly buffed versions of the worst skills of Falcon and Storm, and his blue cannibalizes itself too much to be appealing.

Unknown

simonsez wrote:

If his new yellow actually prioritized enemy special tiles, rather than be just random, people might actually want to use him.

I actually thought that's what it did when I first read the power description. Even if that was the case though, shouldn't that really be a function given to Bird Strike, whose 4th and 5th covers are just protect tile overload as it stands now? The problem with this new yellow ability is it's lost everything that was fun and different about CMags. Yeah, he was overpowered. But using his blue to make matches and control the board was really entertaining in a way that no other character approaches. This is completely gone now, replaced by another random firing power that may or may not give you the results you really want, and that's a shame.

simonsez

Thugpatrol wrote:

The problem with this new yellow ability is it's lost everything that was fun and different about CMags.

Agreed. They might as well have just deleted him and given these skills to a different character. Almost kinda feels like what they did was take some skills that were on the drawing board for upcoming characters and used them here. I see no correlation at all between what he used to do and what he does now. Seriously, how hard would it have been just to increase the cost of red and blue? They could have made that change in a day (see: Storm), and he'd no longer be broken. Instead we get months and months of fumfering just to end up with this clusterfk of abilities.