*** Magneto (Classic) ***

Raffoon

I'd really like to hear further reasoning behind why the purple ability was made yellow. The change post gave the reason as:

"There's also the weirdness in having his abilities not match hit color strengths. So let's fix that while we're at it."

"Weirdness" and "while we're at it" aren't really phrases I'd hope would describe the thoughts behind a giant change that's been carefully reasoned through.

Raffoon

I'd really like to hear further reasoning behind why the purple ability was made yellow. The change post gave the reason as:

"There's also the weirdness in having his abilities not match hit color strengths. So let's fix that while we're at it."

"Weirdness" and "while we're at it" aren't really phrases I'd hope would describe the thoughts behind a giant change that's been carefully reasoned through.

Unknown

I actually like the new Mags. He has one of the better reds and his magnetic translocation is still decent enough. If I can be honest, I think people are comparing him to old op c.mags rather than ideal balanced characters like Punisher.

I pretty much used the new Mags in every mission with success in the latest Simulator. He pairs well with gsbw, Thor and/or Hood. No TU tiles on board = Better Deceptive Tactics and Dormamus Aid.

He is certainly very usable, which I can't say the same for Spidey. I woulda loved if Spidey got the same treatment. A redesign rather than a blatant numbers nerf.

Unknown

I'm somewhere between the two above commenters. I don't dislike the new CMags, but I'm having trouble finding the right team mate for him given the color change from purple to yellow. His previous colors allowed relatively complementary pairing with Ares, and even better, Black Panther as a tank. His new yellow power conflicts with Ares's Sunder and BP's Battleplan (with redundancy with BP's Defense Grid as well). For now, I've resorted to running him with OBW. There is some synergy there now that purple is free for Aggressive Recon, but the team is quite squishy and pairing with Hood is also squishy. CMags is no tank -- he's more towards the support end of the spectrum so I prefer to run him with someone who tanks his tiles. I'm glad the above commenter mentioned LThor. When I manage to get a LazyThor (or Patch) built up maybe I'll have better luck with him. But this change was a real shakeup for me in PVP where CMags was my main. I'm not sure how he meshes with Hulk -- the colors complement fairly well, but Hulk's green battery doesn't do much for CMags so it feels like a poor fit.

In the end, I'd probably be having an easier time working with a Blue/Red/Purple cMags with the purple remaining the same, blue being the defense tiles and red being changed as is. For now, he remains an available bachelour in my roster. Any recommends on better pairings for this new CMags are welcome.

GrimSkald

Raffoon wrote:

I'd really like to hear further reasoning behind why the purple ability was made yellow. The change post gave the reason as:

"There's also the weirdness in having his abilities not match hit color strengths. So let's fix that while we're at it."

"Weirdness" and "while we're at it" aren't really phrases I'd hope would describe the thoughts behind a giant change that's been carefully reasoned through.

Magneto's color strengths were Red, Blue, and Yellow. This is a hold over from when he was intended to be a 2 color character - apparently a number of characters were supposed to be just two colors before they made it so that pretty much every character other than 1*s have three colors. For whatever reason, they decided that Yellow suited the protect ability better than Purple, since they decided to make the "swap blast" blue. So rather than change his color strength to purple, they made the protect power yellow. I'm fairly sure that was their reasoning.

Unknown

I got hit by a Magnetized Particle and it hit a lot harder than I thought it'd (about 5K). The problem is that blue is still too weak overall as this makes it a grand total of 2 good blue moves to watch for (Demolition + Magnetized Particles, Chemical Reaction is too low cost to be defended even if it's quite good), but it doesn't hit hard enough to create a scenario like how Aggressive Recon has no counter because it hits super hard but it's the only usable purple move in a very large range of player roster strengths. Similar to how black recently got a boost with Surgical Strike and likely the upcoming Fastball Special, there should be some moves that are moved to blue to make it harder to ignore that color.

Unknown

Spoit wrote:

If you don't have so many strikes on the board that just tickling him with a off-color match 3 triggers anger, it's not a big deal anyway. A single anger isn't going to be the end of the word, even a couple at a time should probably be manageable as long as he'd throw it away on a thunderous clap once you've eliminated the other teams actually useful green powers.

Agreed ... the key for me with Hulk is to whittle him early and then shift him to the back until he is alone and his green generation from anger does not feed someone like Patch or Thor or X-Force.

Spoit

Raffoon wrote:

So, after some further playtesting, the upside is that his yellow kind of counters Sentry to some degree. The downside is that his red is pretty much only useful once per match and only situationally does anything approaching decent damage, his colors no longer fit where they used to, he no longer synergizes with strike tiles, he no longer generates any kind of AP, and despite his massive reduction in offensive power, he still sits at 6800 HP so he's a flimsy target.

Overall, it still feels like a completely different character and a giant middle finger from the devs.

The way his old blue worked was already kind of countering sentry. Sure it has more value now, but that extra AP means it's almost never going to be ready before an AI sentry gets enough to WR, much less a player one

GrimSkald wrote:

Raffoon wrote:

I'd really like to hear further reasoning behind why the purple ability was made yellow. The change post gave the reason as:

"There's also the weirdness in having his abilities not match hit color strengths. So let's fix that while we're at it."

"Weirdness" and "while we're at it" aren't really phrases I'd hope would describe the thoughts behind a giant change that's been carefully reasoned through.

Magneto's color strengths were Red, Blue, and Yellow. This is a hold over from when he was intended to be a 2 color character - apparently a number of characters were supposed to be just two colors before they made it so that pretty much every character other than 1*s have three colors. For whatever reason, they decided that Yellow suited the protect ability better than Purple, since they decided to make the "swap blast" blue. So rather than change his color strength to purple, they made the protect power yellow. I'm fairly sure that was their reasoning.

which is "weird" since like half of the noteworthy protect tile abilities trigger off purple, and the other half trigger off blue. So....

Dayv

Spoit wrote:

which is "weird" since like half of the noteworthy protect tile abilities trigger off purple, and the other half trigger off blue. So....

I'm not necessarily defending the move to yellow for Magneto, but yellow has a fair number of protect tile skills as well:

Armored Attack
Avengers Assemble (protect tiles are the first effect gained, and the only guaranteed one)
Medical Marvel (marginal, only sometimes)
Sentinel of Liberty (two versions)

Unknown

Anybody else think new Magneto came out dull? He doesn't have any tricks, at least none I can see.

By tricks here is what I mean:
Thor & gs Black Widow build their big green powers
Black Panther & Punisher make strike tiles to maximize team damage
Daken let's you double dip on green
Psylocke makes her red easier the more she plays it
Sentry & Patch deal great damage but are dangerous to their own team
Hulk turns incoming damage into huge amounts of green

New Magneto is just attack or defend, pretty dull. Now if his yellow generated some red and blue defense tiles, that would power up his blue for more damage.

Nonce Equitaur 2

Dantekamar wrote:

Anybody else think new Magneto came out dull?

Yeah, he's dull. I think he's sightly more dangerous in enemy teams now with two decent attacks, but also less spammy.

Unknown

He's basically a usable Lazy Storm.

NorthernPolarity

Dantekamar wrote:

Anybody else think new Magneto came out dull? He doesn't have any tricks, at least none I can see.

By tricks here is what I mean:
Thor & gs Black Widow build their big green powers
Black Panther & Punisher make strike tiles to maximize team damage
Daken let's you double dip on green
Psylocke makes her red easier the more she plays it
Sentry & Patch deal great damage but are dangerous to their own team
Hulk turns incoming damage into huge amounts of green

New Magneto is just attack or defend, pretty dull. Now if his yellow generated some red and blue defense tiles, that would power up his blue for more damage.

It's not a bad thing: not all characters need to have a gimmick. You could also argue that C. Mags red clears the board of TU tiles so that theres a better chance of getting red/blue tiles for translocate (completely ignoring the fact that C. Mags red cannibalizes translocate since it costs red AP to begin with...)

NorthernPolarity

Dantekamar wrote:

Anybody else think new Magneto came out dull? He doesn't have any tricks, at least none I can see.

By tricks here is what I mean:
Thor & gs Black Widow build their big green powers
Black Panther & Punisher make strike tiles to maximize team damage
Daken let's you double dip on green
Psylocke makes her red easier the more she plays it
Sentry & Patch deal great damage but are dangerous to their own team
Hulk turns incoming damage into huge amounts of green

New Magneto is just attack or defend, pretty dull. Now if his yellow generated some red and blue defense tiles, that would power up his blue for more damage.

It's not a bad thing: not all characters need to have a gimmick. You could also argue that C. Mags red clears the board of TU tiles so that theres a better chance of getting red/blue tiles for translocate (completely ignoring the fact that C. Mags red cannibalizes translocate since it costs red AP to begin with...) I would also say that Black Panther is even duller than C. Mags. His yellow into black combo isn't really a combo since yellow boosts blacks damage by less than 10% which is completely negligible, so none of his three skills really synergize in any meaningful way at all.

Phaserhawk

Dantekamar wrote:

Anybody else think new Magneto came out dull? He doesn't have any tricks, at least none I can see.

By tricks here is what I mean:
Thor & gs Black Widow build their big green powers
Black Panther & Punisher make strike tiles to maximize team damage
Daken let's you double dip on green
Psylocke makes her red easier the more she plays it
Sentry & Patch deal great damage but are dangerous to their own team
Hulk turns incoming damage into huge amounts of green

New Magneto is just attack or defend, pretty dull. Now if his yellow generated some red and blue defense tiles, that would power up his blue for more damage.

I suppose you could say dull, but he's harder to play then he once was. Before it was get 5 blue quickly and then make 5 in a row. Run out of blue, cast red, rinse and repeat, eventually the team is worn down and you had enough bonus cascade AP that you could finish people off. Now, not so much. I absolutely love his new red, and this has made him very dangerous on defense as most players don't go after TU's because they are slow, well if Mags gets 8 red and you have 10-14 TU out which actually happens very regularly for me against the AI, holy **** does that hurt. I got hit with a 12 TU PF, which killed my Panther, the resulting cascade gave them enough green and blue to finish me off. You have to be careful when you attempt to match blue because unless you cast Coercive Force before hand to reduce damage or you are running him with Beast or She-Hulk, he will tank blue, and even old Mags you didn't want him taking damage.

What he is now that he wasn't before is dangerous now on the defensive end. Sure his Purple/now Blue doesn't hit as hard, but his red does, and if he gets yellow off, the game is instantly slowed. And as we know the slower a game goes the worse it is for the attacking player. I really like him. I wish Blue did a little bit more damage on the level 3 or 4 as this got gutted more than it should have. Before you just had to deny him Purple, as blue obviously did nothing and red didn't hurt unless they got strike tiles out, now however you have to deny him red/blue and even yellow. While yellow won't kill you it slows the game up more than his old blue ever did, red is bad, very bad. If C.Mags gets red off, many times it is game, and obviously if he gets blue he'll probably nuke you.

What they did was take the most offensive character in the game, and flipped him to one of the most dangerous defensive characters in the game, however, as we know, defense sucks in MPQ, so while the defensive aspect is nice, he was offensively hurt, he's not bad, Mid-Tier in terms of Damage output. I mean he outdamage a lot of guys, but also does nowhere what he could, and the strike tile synergy is not there like it was. Overall, he's a decent rebalance, an obvious power drop from what he was, but if they tweak a few more characters he could be a solid pick.

Unknown

Definitely, 3/5/5. I have LT's yellow which is a favorite. His red is better than most and the blue is a constant gap in my team so no brainer. That blue is a really solid power. Not as solid as his old infinite blue loop but how can you compare anyone to that???

Nonce Equitaur 2

I vaguely recall that they were going to put out the new Hawkeye first, and then follow with the new Magneto.

That must have been before Speed Shot was designed. Old Mags + Hawkeye would have been charmingly gruesome, erasing Blue and Purple from the board, and doling out 10,000+ damage on turn 2. Combine with Hood to get a vacuum effect with Blue/Purple sparse on the board.

Unknown

His red is insane. This is quietly one of the best abilities in the game now. People were angry when they got Rag'ged in pve, lets hope there is never hard mode with a big cMags. Phones will be thrown.

NateDoggTac

I feel like he can have some synergy with a 5/5/3 Falcon... but who would be the 3rd?
Obviously a strike tile generator. Aside from 3star Daken, what are your opinions?
Punisher and Patch come to mind off the top of my head.

Unknown

NateDoggTac wrote:

I feel like he can have some synergy with a 5/5/3 Falcon... but who would be the 3rd?
Obviously a strike tile generator. Aside from 3star Daken, what are your opinions?
Punisher and Patch come to mind off the top of my head.

psylocke?