*** Sam Wilson (Falcon) *** (Updated)

IceIX

Just posted a Patch Notes that includes the Falcon change as well as a bit of reasoning. Reposted the applicable bits here:

Characters
Falcon
- Iso-8's power was causing an unexplained anomaly with Falcon's Inspiration ability and how it interacted some other character abilities that required a change before he was sent out into action. As well as the current change, another change to this ability is planned in the next Client Update that Agents receive so that he is not over powered in his current incarnation and have fully fixed mechanics when Agents receive that update.
Ability change at current (Old->New)

Level 1 - 30%->10% increase Level 2 - 40%->15% increase Level 3 - 50%->20% increase Level 4 - 60%->25% increase Level 5 - 75%->30% increase

The next Client Update is currently slated to make these changes into static increases that work better as Falcon levels up, as at current this ability encourages keeping Falcon at a low level in order to take less damage and still make use of the power. Exact design for this updated ability is not yet final.

Unknown

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

-edit- okay now that i've chilled for a second and re-read the comment. Is this to be saying that a 5y cover 141 falcon will have a 75% while a 5y cover lvl 15 would be 30% ?
If so and with the intent of not letting lower level be abused i could see that as perfectly reasonable.

Unknown

Poor Falcon.....

Given the nerfed yellow ability I think the only time this guy will see the light of day is during PVE. Hes far to weak to standup in PVP.

I have to say I get changing it from the overpowered 70% but I was hoping that they would have changed it so it got a slight % increase at level 3 and 5 (even 5%) and increased the number of tiles at 2 and 4.

IE

Level 1 - 30%
Level 2 - 4 random tiles
Level 3 - 35%
Level 4 - 5 random tiles
Level 5 - 40%

As it is now Falcon is quite weak. He only affects 3 tiles to a max of 30%. So you never want to use his only active for fear of drowning out the buffing of strike/attack tiles. I might leave him at 5/5/0.

Weakest Character since DD?

NorthernPolarity

MTGOFerret wrote:

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

Edit: ignore, bad math.

Unknown

It's open to interpretation but doesn't IceIX always post stats at minimum (lvl 15) abilities? He states they are also going to figure out how to make it scale with level as well. So maybe after he is fully leveled this doesn't actually amount to a nerf?

Unknown

30% of Judgment for making a yellow match is still pretty decent. Even with no outlet for yellow, that's basically like getting a 72% version of Judgment on yellow, which would put the skill roughly on par with Psychic Knife. I'm having problem thinking of a good outlet for his yellow except Nick Fury... or maybe that's the plan after all?

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

Not really though. If you think about Punisher's 3 strike tiles, 5 yellow now boosts his total tile damage from 300 to 570, which is still pretty damn good for a single yellow match. Old Falcon would have boosted it from 300 to 975, which is pretty overpowered, even by non-Phantron standards.

Uh maybe my math is off but isnt +30% of 300 only +100 thus being 400? where as the old ability would have made it +225 for a total of 525

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

Not really though. If you think about Punisher's 3 strike tiles, 5 yellow now boosts his total tile damage from 300 to 570, which is still pretty damn good for a single yellow match. Old Falcon would have boosted it from 300 to 975, which is pretty overpowered, even by non-Phantron standards.

It's +70%/+30% to 3 tiles, so Punisher's tiles would go from 100X3 to 170X3 (510) under the old way and 130X3 (390) under the new way.

To put things in perspective, imagine the ability was simply 'add a 90 damage strike tile when making a yellow', that'd still be pretty awesome. Yes it's not applicable in every situation but getting a Judgment to stick is just not that hard. On the old way it'd be equivalent of 'add a 210 damage strike tile when making a yellow'.

I'm guessing the in the long run they'll probably settle for something in the range of 100 strike/150 attack/150 protect total for static values at level 5, so something like 33/50/50 for each tile. Right now this character's power simply swings too much depending on how he's with. If he's with Psylocke his yellow is kind of weak. If he's Nick Fury he'd be pretty awesome (even at 30%). 30% looks roughly okay with The Punisher, but that means you can't really pair him with anyone weaker than The Punisher, so that pretty much limits you to two choices, The Punisher + Nick Fury.

Unknown

entropic01 wrote:

It's open to interpretation but doesn't IceIX always post stats at minimum (lvl 15) abilities? He states they are also going to figure out how to make it scale with level as well. So maybe after he is fully leveled this doesn't actually amount to a nerf?

I think you're right and the idea is that he's not exploitable as a massive boost at level 15 or whatever. So now covers + levels boost the % rather than just covers. It'd make a lot more sense that they want you to have to use ISO.

Unknown

AethD wrote:

entropic01 wrote:

It's open to interpretation but doesn't IceIX always post stats at minimum (lvl 15) abilities? He states they are also going to figure out how to make it scale with level as well. So maybe after he is fully leveled this doesn't actually amount to a nerf?

I think you're right and the idea is that he's not exploitable as a massive boost at level 15 or whatever. So now covers + levels boost the % rather than just covers. It'd make a lot more sense that they want you to have to use ISO.

Having levels boost % is literally a balance disaster waiting to happen. I'm pretty sure what they mean is that his boost will be changed to a static value (add 10 to strike tile damage) and that number can go up as you level since it's no longer a %, but they haven't figured out what numbers make sense. This would also stop the character from being useless when paired up with weak special tile generators.

NorthernPolarity

MTGOFerret wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

Not really though. If you think about Punisher's 3 strike tiles, 5 yellow now boosts his total tile damage from 300 to 570, which is still pretty damn good for a single yellow match. Old Falcon would have boosted it from 300 to 975, which is pretty overpowered, even by non-Phantron standards.

Uh maybe my math is off but isnt +30% of 300 only +100 thus being 400? where as the old ability would have made it +225 for a total of 525

Whoops, that is what 6 hours of sleep would do to me. Yeah, so in this case it would end up being like getting a 90 damage strike tile for matching yellow, which is still decent as Phantron said.

Unknown

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

NorthernPolarity wrote:

MTGOFerret wrote:

Ice i love ya an all man but can we seriously get at least one character that you guys ignore Phantron's incessant calls for the nerf bat on?

Well i suppose welcome to our new overlord bag bird.

Not really though. If you think about Punisher's 3 strike tiles, 5 yellow now boosts his total tile damage from 300 to 570, which is still pretty damn good for a single yellow match. Old Falcon would have boosted it from 300 to 975, which is pretty overpowered, even by non-Phantron standards.

Uh maybe my math is off but isnt +30% of 300 only +100 thus being 400? where as the old ability would have made it +225 for a total of 525

Whoops, that is what 6 hours of sleep would do to me. Yeah, so in this case it would end up being like getting a 90 damage strike tile for matching yellow, which is still decent as Phantron said.

Meh i dont about you but im not exactly jumping for joy over here. For a character to have 2 passive skills in a roster of 141's those passives had better be amazing to warrant the roster slot. :-/
Frankly im doing my best to not sound like Mechgouki here, but it seems every character that is released gets the nerf bat asap. This is getting quite demoralizing rather quickly

-edit- also dont sweat it my math was off too just not as drastically lol

Unknown

From the way this character is described it seems like a programmer figured out something cool (how to change strength of existing tiles), and then they playtested this on Latrivia and figured you need Falcon's passive to add 700% damage to make sense (for Latrivia environmental effect) but left off a zero and ended up with 70%.

70% would actually make sense on someone like Psylocke, but it is way too powerful on The Punisher. The character by design is a balance disaster waiting to happen as his value changes greatly between who he's paired with. The sooner they settle on the static values for his yellow, the better everyone will be off.

Unknown

Phantron wrote:

AethD wrote:

entropic01 wrote:

It's open to interpretation but doesn't IceIX always post stats at minimum (lvl 15) abilities? He states they are also going to figure out how to make it scale with level as well. So maybe after he is fully leveled this doesn't actually amount to a nerf?

I think you're right and the idea is that he's not exploitable as a massive boost at level 15 or whatever. So now covers + levels boost the % rather than just covers. It'd make a lot more sense that they want you to have to use ISO.

Having levels boost % is literally a balance disaster waiting to happen. I'm pretty sure what they mean is that his boost will be changed to a static value (add 10 to strike tile damage) and that number can go up as you level since it's no longer a %, but they haven't figured out what numbers make sense. This would also stop the character from being useless when paired up with weak special tile generators.

I don't necessarily think that having the % tied to level is a balance disaster, but having 70% boost might have been. But after rereading what IceIX posted I think you're right that it'll probably just be 30% for now and they'll change it to a +X instead of a % which does make it better for weaker generators, but worse for the bigger ones.

EDIT:
Just remembered that this is a passive ability. Yeah boosting by a % is insane unless boosted tiles can only get boosted once.

Unknown

Did someone say bag bird? Makes me sad...but maybe he'll still see more action than his brethren... Bag Man and Bag Lady and on occasion Bag Blind and Bag Eye

Unknown

Falcon is always going to be viable as soon as Nick Fury covers are available, because 30% on Escape Plan is still pretty insane, and he's also the only person that can reliably stop an Escape Plan not counting Magneto, who probably won't be having his ability to overwrite any tile for 5 blue forever.

Unknown

Most people however won't have many fury covers. Being 4 stars he is suppose to be super hard to get...though, I've almost maxed out my xforce wolvie and just finally got my first punisher cover. RNGesus works in mysterious ways

Unknown

AethD wrote:

Phantron wrote:

AethD wrote:

entropic01 wrote:

It's open to interpretation but doesn't IceIX always post stats at minimum (lvl 15) abilities? He states they are also going to figure out how to make it scale with level as well. So maybe after he is fully leveled this doesn't actually amount to a nerf?

I think you're right and the idea is that he's not exploitable as a massive boost at level 15 or whatever. So now covers + levels boost the % rather than just covers. It'd make a lot more sense that they want you to have to use ISO.

Having levels boost % is literally a balance disaster waiting to happen. I'm pretty sure what they mean is that his boost will be changed to a static value (add 10 to strike tile damage) and that number can go up as you level since it's no longer a %, but they haven't figured out what numbers make sense. This would also stop the character from being useless when paired up with weak special tile generators.

I don't necessarily think that having the % tied to level is a balance disaster, but having 70% boost might have been. But after rereading what IceIX posted I think you're right that it'll probably just be 30% for now and they'll change it to a +X instead of a % which does make it better for weaker generators, but worse for the bigger ones.

EDIT:
Just remembered that this is a passive ability. Yeah boosting by a % is insane unless boosted tiles can only get boosted once.

In ICEIX's post he says the point is to keep the level low so he is not tanking. So I can guarntee its not going to scale with lvl. Falcon is like Hood no real reason to level him other than HP. I really think the reason he got Nerfed is because of Fury. At max level Fury makes a 539 strike tile. Even after the nerf if you start adding 30% a match to that it gets nasty fast. At 70% increase per yellow match thats a real game ender and if assumptions are correct Fury will do great things with the yellow plus he is the perfect tank for Falcon. Fury+Falcon(old) was a serious pay to win strategy. Though to be honest I am not sure they really difused the situation.

Falcon's purple sucks and unless his blue has a much lower CD at lvl 5 its pretty bad too. So increasing the number of tiles affected by his yellow seems reasonable. The 30% bonus per match for 3 random tiles isn't worth having Falcon on a non Fury team IMO. Yellow has a serious lack of users and you will be much better off using Daken to match 3 green then using Falcon. 2* daken drops 2x38 stregth strike tiles. I have to believe that 3* is going to be droping a total of more then 90 strike damage per match and you can do so much more with green. Daken also has a self heal which as far as I can tell is better than either of Falcon's other abilities.

He might be okay with Patch. At least then your getting 44 damage increase per tile (132 damage increase overall) and removing some unfriendly strike tiles.

IceIX

Rorex wrote:

In ICEIX's post he says the point is to keep the level low so he is not tanking. So I can guarntee its not going to scale with lvl.

That's actually one of the two problems we're fixing. At this very moment, that's true. You'd want him to be lower level than anyone else in your group so that he isn't tanking any colors but high enough to get the most effect out of his Purple. There would never be a reason to have him highly leveled, which is definitely substandard. With R52, the increases are planned to be static so that if you want higher numbers on Strike tiles, you're going to have to push his levels up.

Unknown

Will the numbers be different for Strike/Attack/Defense tiles, or will all types of tiles get the same increase?